


Seraphine

by MonikaFileFan



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Case File, F/M, Feminist Themes, Mysticism, RST, Romance, Season/Series 05, Smut, UST, Visions, gay themes, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:34:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27662759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonikaFileFan/pseuds/MonikaFileFan
Summary: Another forest; another cryptid; another moment of life-changing clarity in which Mulder and Scully embark on a journey of the heart, and other improbable things.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 56
Kudos: 136
Collections: X-Files Case File Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	1. 60 Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crescentmoon223](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescentmoon223/gifts).



> Prompt: I'd love a Monster of the Week with a real monster and lots of fun M&S banter (like Detour, Quagmire, Agua Mala). Bonus points for some sort of stranded together and shared sleeping bag situation. UST, UST to RST, fluff, smut, angst, I'm easy to please as long as you give me a happy ending!
> 
> Rachel, I really loved your prompt and made sure I incorporated all of your preferences as well as I possibly could. I’m crossing my fingers I portrayed my first real case fic the way you hoped. 
> 
> Thanks SO much to my beta’s Annie, Nicole, Jeri, Cecilia, Jaime, and Kasey for reading and talking out my struggles with me!

_Prologue_

  
  
  


SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

MICHIGAN, NORTHERN LOWER PENINSULA 

SUMMER, 1938

A warm breeze swept through the forest as the men’s boisterous chatter intensified. Withholding a smirk that threatened to expose his softer side, Elijah Bay swiped a handkerchief across his sweaty brow and took in the scene before him. Tough love was what these men needed in order to stay on task, even though the tough part seemed to elude him at times. 

“Eh, quit screwin’ around! We’ve got a job to do here,” he ordered, eyeing each one of his men critically. “We ain’t got much daylight left to skid and log another tree, and we need to move deeper in to find one worth our time. And you know what that means. The older the better.” 

“It’s hotter than hell out here, boss,” young Walter grumbled, running a dirt-crusted hand through his peach fuzz beard. Barely fifteen and already one of the guys.

Elijah huffed, his impatience growing. “It’ll be cooler in there.” He waved a hand toward the center of the woods. “Now get yer asses in gear.”

The men nodded, gathering their logging equipment, and trudged deeper into the heart of the forest. All but one lone man intentionally absent from the crew’s shenanigans, that is. Elijah glanced around, making sure all of the loggers were no longer in sight, and started off in the opposite direction in search of the rogue crew member. 

He heard the sounds of trickling water minutes later and knew exactly where to look. He pushed aside a low hanging branch and what he saw stopped him in his tracks. The summer sun shone down through the canopy of trees, highlighting an unruly sea of familiar golden locks belonging to the man he’d been searching for. 

His heart slammed in anticipation within his burly chest, like an axe befalling a tree trunk, he realized. The same feeling he always got when he approached him this way. 

“You’re hidin’,” Elijah said, absorbing the image of the man’s rocks skipping freely down the Platte River. 

“Mm,” he agreed. “The day’s almost through.”

“I know. I sent the crew off.”

Turning around to face Elijah eye to eye, beard to beard, the young man of twenty with a magnetic, lopsided grin replied ruefully, “Good.”

“John…”

“Shh, Elijah,” John pressed a finger to Elijah’s lips, and he could not resist the urge to kiss them as he did. “We don’t have long this time.”

“We never do.” Elijah’s desire could no longer be concealed. Their shared need for more than just lingering glances and stolen moments of passion weren’t going away like the tales of men seeking another man’s company had indicated in the past. 

But this was no tale teasingly told over ale and moonshine. This was so much more. More than any physical attraction or a need for release. Elijah loved John, fiercely. And it scared the shit out of him. 

John slid his hand down Elijah’s chest and palmed the skin over his heart. He had never told John how he felt, never let himself say the words aloud. Fear held him back and guilt gnawed away at any courage he tried to build. 

Maybe it always would. 

“My wife… John, I don’t wanna hurt her, but I can’t deny the way I feel for you anymore.”

John gasped and leaned forward in his work boots to press his thin body against Elijah’s muscular one, capturing his mouth in a long, tender kiss. 

“And what is it you feel, Elijah?” John mumbled along his bottom lip. “Please, just tell me.”

Could he tell him? Could he finally express his deep yearning for more? 

Before Elijah could consider how to respond next, an ear piercing screech reverberated through the trees, echoing what sounded like fearful screams through the humid air. 

Elijah tore away from John - the noise painfully vibrating his eardrums - and snapped his head towards where his crew was working. “What the hell?”

_CRACK!_

A familiar sound of metal cleaving through thick oak resounded through the air.

The sky instantly darkened, swirling colors of soot and silver, like they’d stepped into an eye of a storm. Elijah fisted John’s overalls and protectively yanked him away from a swaying branch above them. Heat lightning tinted in a violet hue zapped angrily across the sky, only to be upstaged by a cacophony of booms and whipping wind. In the distance, a large orange and white light floated between trees, as if someone he could not see carried a torch through the growing darkness. 

Elijah shook his head, drifting toward the light. “The men...”

“Something’s wrong,” John said, concerned, but Elijah was already sprinting through the hilly landscape, stumbling over thick foliage to help his crew. “Come on, John, let’s go!” he yelled over his shoulder. 

“Hello!” Elijah screamed. “What happened? Eh, can anyone hear me, what the hell’s goin’ on?” he continued to yell, but was met with an eerie silence. Not even the birds sang. 

He ran, panicked, for what felt like an hour but seemed as though he’d gotten no closer to the heart of the forest than feet from where he started. Exhausted, he stopped to catch his breath and was about to insist John run back to camp to alert the med staff in town of an accident, when he realized John was nowhere to be found. 

“John?” he hollered, spinning in circles to look for his missing lover. “Goddammit!” Frustrated and confused, Elijah thought for one brief terrifying moment that maybe _he_ was the one lost in this scenario. 

One rule of logging he’d always made sure was drilled into his men’s heads was that being lost meant you just had to wait where your ass sat in order to be found. But that meant his men could be lying in the dirt injured without their foreman’s help. 

Unacceptable. 

Taking in his surroundings, something strange caught Elijah’s eye. A massive, shimmering wall of air that seemed to ripple with the wind from the direction he’d just come made his spine stiffen. It was in the same direction where he’d left John behind. Whatever this thing was, he had just run through it. 

Before panic put a stranglehold on the remainder of his senses, Elijah decided to mark his trail. He found a sharp rock and scratched an X deep into the bark of a massive White Oak. 

“How dare you,” a stern tinny voice growled from behind him. 

He inhaled sharply and jerked around to see who was there, knowing that voice was one he had never heard any of his logging men breathe to him in his life. It was the voice of a woman. 

“Who’s there?”

A small, willowy figure with long flowing hair moved gracefully through the shadows. 

“No one you know… yet,” the woman cooed. Her voice was soothing, lulling him, making his limbs heavy and lax. He melted to the ground knowing he’d only ever felt this way when the moonshine kicked in and coaxed his soul into slumber - and Elijah hadn’t had a single sip of white lightning in days. “Soon, you will know so much more. Soon you will see.”

“See what? Are they here, my men?”

She groaned, as if in pain, her stark white teeth glowing like a bone-colored moon. “No, I am alone. Always alone,” she murmured sadly, then began to sing.

  
  
  


***

Elijah squinted, the sun and sheer exhaustion blurring his vision, but he could finally see open fields through the tree line ahead. His heart nearly leapt from his chest. 

_Freedom!_

Adrenaline surged through his veins as he began to run. He was close, so close to finding his way out of this magical maze filled with nothing but tortuous images of the only things he had ever wanted and was not able to have. Witchcraft, it was. It had to be. Visions of _what could be_ assailing his mind and hurting his heart. Nothing but witchcraft, and he wanted no part of it. 

All he wanted now was John. 

The only thing Elijah had ever wanted in life was to be happy with the one person he could not live without but he had been too damn fearful to admit it. He realized while being stuck in this forest and assaulted with visions of a life he did not lead, that he may not have ever admitted it aloud. Now, it was all he could think about doing.

“John, I’m coming for you. I’m coming…”

He stumbled over a gnarled root just feet away from the end of the woods and fell face first in the brambles with a shout. 

“To hell with you!” he wailed, distraught at the fact that the man he loved was missing without having any clue of what happened or where he was. Had no clue as to the fate of his logging crew, either. “John…”

Determined, Elijah crawled through the brambled tree line with renewed vigor; a prickling sensation danced across his skin. He shook it off, head spinning, and gasped at what he saw next. 

The area that held meager farmers and lumberjacks was now bustling with activity from people wandering around with a look of confusion on their faces. He had never remembered seeing this many people near these uncharted woods before, let alone when he’d walked into the forest as the sun rose this morning. 

“Eh, are you okay?” a man he didn’t know asked, approaching him as he knelt with a hesitation that sent goose flesh stippling across his arms. He wore a bright yellow jacket that had “Search Team Leader” written on the lapel. “You lost? I think you might be who we’ve been lookin’ for. ”

“What? I don’t know,” he answered honestly, eyes darting around the unfamiliar scene. Where was his crew and their equipment? Where was John? And why was he alone? “I… I don’t remember.” 

“You just walked out of Sleeping Bear. You don’t remember what crew you were in there with?” 

“No, I mean I don’t remember anything that happened inside of there at all.” 

  
  
  


_____

SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

MICHIGAN, NORTHERN LOWER PENINSULA 

OUTSKIRTS 

60 YEARS LATER

The blazing summer sun had Rebecca Shaw’s thick blonde hair glued to her neck with perspiration. 

A dinner date out in the secluded wilderness with her fiancé was their last ditch effort for a peaceful, romantic evening together before their lives changed forever. The fact that she was roasting like a marshmallow over a flame was an unfortunate side effect only she had to deal with, apparently. 

“David, honey, you know I love you, but if the sun doesn’t slip beneath the trees within the next five minutes, your child will be born with a tan,” she teased, stroking the taut swell of her nine month pregnant belly. 

He chuckled, sweeping tendrils of sticky hair from her pale skin and kissing her brow. “Now that would be a feat, Becca, considering you tan like a tomato.” 

“Careful now,” she arched a brow. “You’ve just booked yourself an appointment for an all night foot rub.” 

“An all nighter, eh?” David trailed his pouty lips down to her cheek, peppering sweet kisses against her warm flesh. “My pleasure.”

“I’m sure,” she smirked and kissed him soundly until the sky turned pink. 

Cicadas started to strum their evening songs when David lit the lanterns he had packed in a sudden urge to be romantic, likely hoping an outdoor lovemaking session might happen under the northern stars. Unbeknownst to him, Rebecca already had plans to skip dessert and indulge in an explicit third trimester craving of her own. 

David slid his hands down to her puffy ankles to slip off her shoes and socks, his tawny, nimble fingers sending a thrill through her limbs as he began kneading the sore soles of her feet. 

She moaned and her eyes fluttered shut while David began to speak.

“The trees are amazing at sunset way out here. I still can’t believe this is one of the oldest forests in America. Just imagine what’s out there,” he said wistfully. Rebecca understood his overwhelming love of the outdoors with both of them growing up surrounded by the beauty of the Great Lakes. Living in the city now only served to showcase their need to resubmerge themselves in the wilderness. 

“You’re amazing,” she murmured, smiling. “And I don’t need to imagine that.”

He squeezed her toes. “Ya know, people should be green with envy seeing how much I love you.”

“They absolutely should,” she agreed as her fingertips danced languidly across David’s thigh, feeling his warm muscles twitch beneath them as she thought back to her childhood: her late mother tucking her in at night, telling her magical tales and legends of mystical forests that just so happened to be located close to home. None of those stories ended with _happily ever after._

Chuckling, he said, “My mom is over the moon that we came to visit this week, but I think she was hoping you’d have popped by now so she could snuggle that grandbaby of hers.”

“I think you’re right. Maybe we can visit here every summer with our daughter? Bring her out here and let her run barefoot through the rolling hills while her baby soft curls bounce in the breeze,” she wondered, already imagining their cherub-cheeked child snuggled between them as they watched the sunset as a family of three. “How’s that sound?”

David sighed, “Like heaven.”

Suddenly, the once tame, indigo sky swirled above and the once bright stars faded to black. Millions of leaves rattled like wind chimes through a harsh gust of air and even the cicadas were silenced by its wrath. 

A chill crept down Rebecca’s previously sweat-dappled spine as a soft whimpering drifted through the breeze. “David…”

His ministrations along her arches stopped before he hopped to his feet. “You hear that?”

“Yes, but I thought we were alone.”

David spun around, scanning the empty field past their SUV parked down the hill, concern written across is face. “We are.”

The whimpering got louder and Rebecca could tell it came from a woman. She sounded utterly anguished, but something prodded her protective instincts to keep her fiancé close. Something unnatural. 

The silence was deafening.

“Something’s wrong.” Rebecca rolled onto her hands and knees and scrambled to pack up their belongings. “Let’s get out of here, David.”

She went to reach for her shoes when in the corner of her eye she spotted a red light flickering through the bushes that quickly disappeared behind a tree trunk - and David was just feet in front of it. 

Her heart raced beneath her breast. “David!” 

“What if it’s a child lost out there?” He didn’t move, just stood poised to react. 

“Please, honey, come on, let’s just call someone to help,” she begged as the sorrowful cries intensified and seemed to echo through the forest.

_That_ was no child’s voice. 

Her own child kicked wildly beneath her palms, sensing her mother’s rising panic. Rebecca stepped off the blanket to drag the kind-hearted, stubborn man back to their car herself when a loud thunderclap blasted through the sky, sending a thick bolt of purple and white lightning soaring through the clouds behind her. She whipped her head around to see where it struck, the wind blowing her hair into her eyes, blinding her while she turned back to face David. But when she did, her fiancé had vanished.

Fear rippled through her and she screamed, “ _David!_ ”

Rebecca ran to the tree line, her toes gripping the grass with every waddling stride before bursting through the underbrush. The brambles tangled tightly around her ankles like seaweed pulling her under water. She _was_ drowning, she thought, choking on a wave of dread. 

“Dammit, David, come back!” Golden tendrils of hair stuck to the tears flowing down her cheeks as she sobbed into the darkness. Then the sky suddenly opened, calming the whirling clouds and the heavens wept with her. “Please…”

Her shoulders slumped as she sank limply to her knees, arms cradling her precious cargo. In an instant Rebecca knew the legends of mystical forests were real, and the man she could not fathom life without was now lost within one. 

She could only hope that their story had a very different ending. 

  
  
  
  


_____  
  
  
  


_“You’re crazy and I’m out of my mind.”_

_-John Legend_

  
  
  


MICHIGAN, NORTHERN LOWER PENINSULA 

EMPIRE COUNTY 

PRESENT DAY - THREE DAYS LATER

MAY 18th, 1998

The forest’s beauty was breathtaking. Vibrant greens and rich mahogany browns instantly shrouded their rental car with shade as they pulled off the busy highway. It wasn’t the ocean, but Scully had always held a healthy appreciation for the wild. 

She uncrossed her legs, fully regretting wearing nylons in this heat, and looked over at Mulder in the driver's seat, his tongue working diligently to shuck a sunflower seed from its shell. She suddenly found the cuticles of her nails utterly fascinating. 

“Another forest,” she commented. This was an all too familiar image. A stunning one, of course, but also one Scully wasn’t too keen on seeing displayed up close and personal after their eventful romp in the Florida woods six months ago. 

“Not just any forest,” Mulder said, beaming with barely suppressed glee. “One of the oldest uninhabited forests in the country.” 

“Mulder, no.” Her voice ascended into a whine, and she immediately hated hearing the sound slip through her lips. “Whatever invisible monster you plan on searching for this time can stay that way.” 

“That’s just it, Scully, I don’t plan on searching for a monster,” he justified. “Yet, anyway.”

“Yes, yet.” Scully could still feel the groggy side effects from their early morning flight here as the sunrise painted the northern sky gold. The Ford Taurus dipped and turned through the maze of the hillsides, making her stomach roil. The reminder of how she got here was as glaring as the sun. 

“Speaking of _I_ , Mulder, I ended up with four hours of sleep after your witching hour phone call this morning asking me to ‘pack for the great outdoors’ and meet you at the airport for a 4:15 flight. You’ve given me little information as to why, by the way... and I missed breakfast,” she said pointedly.

“I’m sorry, really, but I did plan on explaining everything on the plane,” Mulder objected. A worried crease formed between his brows that assured her his words were sincere. “And by now I’ve learned not to wake a sleeping bear.”

She withheld a smirk. “4:15 in the morning, Mulder.”

“Noted, and I _am_ sorry about the short notice but this just couldn’t wait.”

She eyed him from the passenger seat, smirking behind her fingers at his shitty tie as she secretly appreciated the way his bottom lip jutted out into a pout with his penance. 

“I didn’t get much sleep either, if it makes you feel any better,” he offered, as if she could ever take pleasure in his unrest. 

“It doesn’t,” she said softly. Scully would rather sacrifice a full night’s sleep if she knew Mulder would get one in return. “It’s okay, I’m here. So what‘s the case?”

“Dancing orbs of light.”

“Excuse me?” 

“Dancing lights are one of the things we’re here to investigate. I’ve been keeping an eye out for cases involving unexplained lights in the sky.”

“Ah,” Scully sighed, propping an elbow on the arm rest and holding her hand over her pursed lips. 

“Not those kinds of lights,” Mulder amended. He cracked the window and flicked a soggy shell out into the wind. “There are several locations around the world where witnesses have reported colorful lights that seem to hover above the ground, hypnotically dancing in the dark.”

She considered this, already forming her own counter-opinion as to what these so-called dancing orbs could be. “And these lights are what we’re currently driving deeper into yet another forest for?” she couldn’t help but jest. “Because the last _nice trip_ earned us a week's admission to a military hospital where I repeatedly kicked your butt at Gin.”

“You swept the floor with me,” Mulder laughed. The rare sound sent warmth through her chest. “But no, that’s not all. There’s a copy of the casefile in your briefcase.” 

Scully reached down into the small, black leather bag at her feet and pulled out the file. “When did you put this in there?” 

“Uh, somewhere over West Virginia, I think?” He drummed his fingers along the wheel and grinned as if he’d just won a lifetime supply of _David’s_ seeds. “It was after you started sawing logs against my shoulder.”

Her cheeks flushed at the memory of waking mid-snore - blurry-eyed and drooling. She was easily lulled soft and pliant along the warmth of his arm as his tender touch skimmed her jawline.

“I don’t snore,” she said daintily, licking her lips and burying her flaming face into the folder. Inside, a photo of a handsome man with big brown eyes and dark brown skin smiled up at her. “David Michelson,” she noted, knowing Mulder was just itching to chime in. “I’m assuming these lights have something to do with him.”

“You’d be right. Three days ago, thirty-one year old David Michelson was having a picnic with his fiancé within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Forest and simply vanished without a trace.”

A photo of a small group of local police and search and rescue members standing around within a tree lined clearing was also included, each person looking more confused than anything. 

“Vanished without a trace,” Scully echoed as she tapped her manicured nail against the file. “His fiancé must have seen something.”

“Right again,” Mulder continued, “The original case report states that Mr. Michelson’s fiancé, Rebecca Shaw, saw a ball of light shining through the trees and heard a woman’s voice. But that statement was later refuted by the Empire County Sheriff’s department after they combed the area and found no evidence that any strange woman nor Rebecca’s missing partner, David, had ever entered the forest.” 

Scully’s eyes widened. “You’re saying they don’t believe her statement?”

“I’m saying, _I_ don’t think they believe he went missing at all. Not against his will, anyway.”

“Well,” Scully started as she set aside the current file of the missing man, the information proving to be lackluster at best, “I’m also assuming you have a theory of your own that overrules the sheriff department’s. Not to mention an X-File that supports it.”

“Therein lies the I in FBI.” Mulder pointed to her briefcase once again as they pulled up to a light. 

Scully opened up a different colored casefile labeled with a number she’d never seen before. She had attempted to memorize all of the original files she could get her hands on the first year they were partners, eager to please and secretly enthralled by the mystery of them all. Then her father died, and Scully realized that some things were better left to the imagination.

“I know I don’t have to tell you that people don’t just vanish,” she reminded him gently, realizing his thoughts would likely drift to Samantha. “The evidence is there, you just-”

“-Have to know where to look,” he finished wistfully. “I do remember what you say, Scully, even over five years later.” She was grateful his eyes were focused on the road instead of the smile currently exposing her teeth. Scully quickly splayed the manila file timestamped as _1938_ across her lap. 

The light turned green, and Mulder gestured towards the file. 

“This very forest seems to have a rich history of housing the mysterious. But folklore aside, that’s not what caught my eye about this case in particular,” he said, pointing to the description of the unexplained missing time that a group of loggers had experienced sixty years earlier. 

Scully read on and noted the correlation she knew Mulder saw from the start. 

“Cryptic lights within the same woods that David Michelson disappeared into - and according to this, all of the men who’d stepped out of the forest in 1938 had reported a shared state of disorientation after-the-fact, since each one of the loggers eventually returned home safely?”

“They did,” Mulder confirmed as they approached the outskirts of town. “But add loss of memory to that list because none of the men seemed to remember what happened in the woods after they left it.” 

“Sounds like some sort of natural phenomena to me.” 

Mulder popped another seed into his mouth and smirked her way. “Sounds like an X-File.”

Scully stared at her partner until he squirmed in his seat. He was ready for her to pick apart the case’s foundation or reprimand his need to drag her out into the wilderness once again. 

Maybe he was right. He usually was. “Maybe…

She crossed her arms over her new double-breasted Donna Karan suit in thought. Her last three had succumbed to dry clean resistant mud stains, black char marks from a Pennsylvania bridge fire she had no recollection of, and one she’d tossed herself, worried it might upset Mulder after he had been Pushed into watching Linda Bowman shoot herself while wearing it just feet in front of him. She wouldn’t be surprised if her outrageous wardrobe replacement bill was the sole cause of Skinner’s budget plight. 

“Scully?”

Mulder sat ruminating in the silence she’d created as rolling hills peppered with vibrant trees of all shapes and sizes flew past while they approached the center of town. 

“Several explanations exist for what you’ve speculated,” she told him, enjoying toying with the idea of feigning annoyance. Misdirection seemed better for them both than admitting the truth. She couldn’t just let him off easily by acknowledging she looked forward to spending both her days _and_ nights in his presence, just being close to him, making sure he was safe, case or no case. 

Scully needed him. Her craving the ability to see, hear, and touch him at a moment’s notice had become aggravating to the part of her that valued her alone time. She needed _all_ of him.

And she was just beginning to accept the fact that she always would. 

“Come on, lay it on me, Scully.”

She held back a smirk of her own and offered her opinion. 

“Mulder, most lights can be explained by natural phenomena, such as bioluminescence or simply marsh gas igniting. Small photon emissions can be replicated by combining chemicals and gasses found in marshes and rotting compost. This would fall in line with the locale where Rebecca Shaw said she saw the lights.”

“Mm, even if this marsh gas seems to move with purpose and comes with a feminine voice?” he asked. Scully strained to recall what chemical reactions could replicate such a thing when Mulder continued, “But I have a different theory.”

“Just one?”

Mulder grinned. “So far.”

“Of course.” Scully shook her head. Of course he did and of course he ended up convincing her to follow him across the country on a whim, like always. So here she was, in yet another rental car that smelled of stale smoke and feet - already tired, attempting to mentally prepare for only God knows what... and utterly thrilled by every minute of it. 

She really was his one and five billion, after all. 

“Well?” Scully prodded as Mulder pulled into the nearest diner offering footlong coney dog combos and a pitcher of pop for _cheap cheap cheap._ “Are you _sure_ your theory doesn’t have a monster in it?”

“Like I said, not yet,” Mulder chuckled as he parked the car and turned to her, his eyes gleaming. “Ever heard of a wisp, Scully?”

“A wisp? Like the paranormal theory of spirits manifesting themselves as an orb of light?”

“Sort of,” he said, tossing her a sexy, lopsided smile. 

She flushed. Suddenly the air conditioning blowing chilled gusts in her face wasn’t quite cutting it for Scully anymore. 

“Folklore attributes the phenomenon of dancing lights - or Wisps - to Faeries, Witches, and elemental spirits,” he continued. “But the supernatural beings who are linked to the wisps are said to be powerful enough to control nature itself.”

Scully couldn’t help but scoff. “Mulder...”

He shrugged and turned off the engine. “Call me crazy, but I could smell the paranormal bouquet all the way from DC.”

“Mulder, you’re crazy,” she said with a smile as she got out of the car, the Michigan humidity slapping reality of the situation in her face as she did. “And I’m out of my mind, apparently.” 

“Oh, Scully, you had to have seen that coming.”

She had, certainly. But what she hadn’t seen coming, what she had been completely blindsided by, was just how much she’d love it. 

  
  



	2. Making Friends In Michigan

_____

  
  
  


“I will chase you my love, 

to the edge of days.”

-Atticus

  
  
  


EMPIRE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT 

OUTSKIRTS OF SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

EMPIRE, MI 

8:45 AM

Mulder turned off the main road when he saw the sign for the sheriff’s department. The waitress at the Shipwreck diner had overheard Scully mention their next course of action needed to include local police. The grey-haired woman wearing several layers of ruby red lipstick and a scowl had dropped off the check - which Scully had fought him to pay for - then muttered a sarcastic, “Good luck.”

Mulder realized then that they might need all the luck they could get. 

“That hit the spot,” he moaned as he rubbed his stomach, now full of coney dogs and greasy, chili cheese fries. 

He snuck an amused glance at his fry-thieving partner next to him. The fact that she never ordered her own “artery-clogging” side dishes because she’d rather steal from him was a Scully-quirk he found endearing. 

“As much as I hate to admit eating that for breakfast was a good idea, I have to agree,” Scully shook her head as she gathered the case information to bring into the sheriff’s office. 

Mulder parked the car and turned toward her, doing a double-take at what he saw soaking through his partner’s clothing. “Uh, Scully?”

“What?” She opened the door and stood, leaning down to stare at him through the car while displaying a large, dark brown stain of chili that missed entering her beautiful mouth and had dripped onto the lapel of her nude suit. 

Mulder cringed as he reached into the pocket of his suit and offered up his handkerchief. “You’ve got some, um, chili on your…” Nipple. He swallowed. “Your front.”

She looked down and sighed, “Dammit.” She made several angry swipes with the hanky down the curve of her breast. “Another casualty for the books. Perfect.”

She took off the jacket, tossed it in the back, and adjusted her plum-colored blouse she’d worn underneath. Mulder averted his eyes as a faint, circular swell of her nipple made its presence known.

He coughed, ignoring the twitch beneath the zipper of his pants. “Charge it to my I owe you tab.”

Scully scoffed, “Sorry, I closed that one out a long time ago,” before slamming the passenger door shut. “Come on, let’s go see what the local authorities have to say about our missing person.”

Mulder felt sorry for the sheriff already. 

The lobby of the small-town station was bustling with activity. Officers crowded around a desk off to the side of the room where a younger woman was speaking loudly as she stood next to an elderly woman with the same brown eyes and tawny skin as their missing person. She then gestured towards a closed door labeled, SHERIFF LEE ABRAMS. 

Mulder palmed Scully’s lower back as he leaned into her. “Looks like we’re not the only ones here to see the sheriff.”

“In the diner, you said he ignored you when you called. Doesn’t seem like he’s offering a warm welcome to anyone.”

“Well, to be fair, I think he thought it was a prank,” Mulder shrugged. “He accused me of being sloshed when I explained why the FBI was interested in investigating and then told me to sleep it off before I booked myself an overnight reservation for the drunk tank.” 

“Not an unfair assumption,” Scully acknowledged, amused, as they moved toward the small group of black and tan uniforms that surrounded the young blond-haired woman who was giving each one of them a piece of her mind. “And?”

“He hung up. So I figured an unannounced face-to-face might be fun.”

She shook her head. “Mulder, I thought you said you’ve learned not to poke a sleeping bear.”

“Sleeping bears I can handle. A sleeping Scully on the other hand…”

He felt her hums of agreement against his palm still cradling the base of her spine, his thumb absently swirling circles around the exact spot where her tattoo was etched into her skin. He’d been doing that more often lately. Slowly increasing claim-worthy gestures he knew he held no entitlement to do, even if she did subtly lean into his touch every time. 

He shoved his hand in his pocket and tried to forget how perfect it felt to keep it there. 

“I’m starting to think the Sleeping Bear Forest is named after the sheriff himself, considering how content he seems to be with sleeping on this case,” she quipped. 

“Feisty, even after two cups of coffee?” Mulder prodded, their easy banter filling him with glee. “You should take the lead today.”

Scully looked up at him with a challenging gleam in her eyes. “Already planned on it.”

“Well then, let’s go rattle the cage.”

Scully cleared her throat and announced herself, nodding sympathetically to both teary-eyed women as they approached the group of deputies. All of them, men. Not one turned to acknowledge her. 

“Excuse me,” Scully said, and Mulder growled to himself a few feet away. 

He clenched his jaw, anger sizzling beneath his skin. He barely resisted stepping forward to assist in asserting her presence, knowing it would only further perpetuate the notion that Scully needed his masculinity to be seen as valid in a professional setting. It pissed him off. Yet this was nothing new to witness and Mulder respected her distaste when he would waltz up beside her and take the lead within a group of men; but goddamn, it was hard not to. It was moments like this where Scully would be proud that he was capable of a modicum of self-restraint. 

“I said excuse me, I’m Special Agent Dana Scully with the FBI, and this is my partner, Fox Mulder,” she repeated firmly. The four officers finally stepped aside and had the decency to look chastened for their initial dismissal. 

Mulder stood beside Scully, brushing her shoulder as he did and her rigid posture relaxed. Combative was not a way to start an investigation, and they both knew it. Mulder ignored the usual small-town glares with practiced ease, confident in his hunch that the tableau before them had everything to do with their case. 

“Hello,” Mulder first extended a hand to the frail woman who instantly reminded him of the way his mother had looked after Samantha went missing: emotionally exhausted and barely functioning. 

Then, he turned to the younger, very distraught woman with tears brimming her eyes. The raw pain he saw there was a tangible thing. Mulder knew that pain. He could feel its familiar ache in his bones. Still, he smiled politely as he glanced down at her caressing the swell of her pregnant belly. “As my partner said, I’m Agent Mulder. Are you Rebecca Shaw?” 

The woman gasped and squeezed his hand. Hope that was not expressed on her face a moment before was now a palpable mien. 

“Yes, yes that’s me,” she confirmed, turning her back on the others who had not been helpful. “And this is my future mother in law, Ella Michelson.”

Ella covered her mouth with a shaky hand. “Oh my, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to help find my son?” 

Scully stepped in and offered encouragement. “His case has caught our attention, but we need more information to move forward.”

“Of course,” Rebecca continued. “As I was just explaining to the deputies, I’m the one who reported my fiancé David missing three days ago and haven’t heard anything new since,” she huffed, glaring at the sheriff’s door. “I want answers.”

Scully nodded. “That’s what we’re here to find.”

“Ma’am,” a tall deputy with a Texas ranger style mustache chimed in. “We’re very sorry, but as you stated, Mr. Markowitz has been gone for less than seventy-two hours and as an adult-”

“Michelson,” Rebecca snapped. “His name is David Michelson, and he isn’t just gone, he’s missing inside that fucking forest exactly as I told you!”

At that moment, the sheriff’s door swung open and a burly man with a thick salt and pepper beard appeared, his brown eyes darting around the room. “What’s goin’ on here?” 

“That’s our question as well,” Scully retorted as Mulder walked up to the man who’d blown him off on the phone the night before. 

“I’m Special Agent Mulder and this is Special Agent Scully with the Bureau,” Mulder said as the sheriff’s eyes widened. They shook hands, the man’s beefy grip tighter than necessary. “I believe we spoke on the phone about my interest in the David Michelson case.” 

“Sheriff Abrams,” he responded, waving off the lingering deputies. He ran a hand through his chalk-white hair and sighed. “Come on in, then.” 

He motioned for the four of them to follow him into his tiny office that smelled of stale cigarettes and lingering Old Spice. 

“Feel free to have a seat.” The sheriff leaned against his desk, arms crossed, clearly miffed with the disruption as Rebecca ushered Ella into a chair. Mulder and Scully remained resolute at Rebecca’s side. “Vacation starts today, so let’s get right to it.” 

Scully stiffened out of the corner of Mulder’s eye, and the tension thickened. 

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca scoffed before anyone could say anything. “But you’re going on vacation while you’ve done nothing to find the father of my child?”

The sheriff arched a wiry brow. “There is no clear-cut evidence pointing to foul play here. And Mr. Michelson is over the age of eighteen, ma’am, so-”

“Don’t _ma’am_ me,” Rebecca cut the sheriff off, her rounded cheeks flushed with anger. “First, you tell me no one can find any evidence that I was in the forest that night, let alone any of David, whom I witnessed with my own eyes vanish within it. You’ve ignored my statement of someone else’s presence within the trees. Then, you have the nerve to question me on whether or not he was ready to get married, and become a father, as if he’d willingly leave me barefoot and pregnant in the middle of a storm?” 

Abrams shrugged. “It’s our job to consider all options when a person’s reported missing. We’ve found people pitchin’ a tent to go off the grid for months at a time out here. People get sick of their city lives and seek the solitude of the Lakeshore. Emotions can get the better of us and people get cold feet.”

Rebecca gritted her teeth. “Not David.”

Ella placed a hand on her future daughter’s forearm, whispering, “Becca, let’s at least wait to hear what else he has to say.” 

Tears pooled in Rebecca’s eyes as she stared down at her pregnant belly. “No one believes me, Ella, and we’re running out of time.”

Ella stifled a sob.

“I do,” Mulder piped in confidently, watching as Sheriff Abrams' mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. 

Rebecca had struck a nerve, and Mulder’s immediate support for her story only served to further ruffle the man’s feathers. He wouldn’t be surprised if Abrams decided to make the rest of his and Scully’s time here as uncomfortable as the man looked right now. 

Mulder certainly understood the feeling of helpless frustration when no one believed. 

“Look, we may be a podunk town compared to the country's capital, but we followed procedure,” Abrams piped back in. “And I’m surprised an unsubstantiated claim of a missing man in our neck of the woods even showed up on the FBI’s radar.”

Scully took an indignant step forward. 

“I assure you, Sheriff, that missing persons are always on our radar. And it seems as though Agent Mulder and I aren’t the only ones who would like to hear updates regarding the search, as well as any finer details surrounding the events of the night Mr. Michelson was reported missing,” she reasoned, always standing at Mulder’s side, backing him up, even if she had her doubts lurking in the background. 

He was more grateful for her than she would ever know.

“We’re not here to step on anyone’s toes. Just trying to gather facts so we can do our job,” Mulder hedged. Rationally, he and Scully both knew the sheriff was bound by law to divulge any information about a missing person’s report, but they also knew from experience that the local PD didn’t always play nice. 

After a moment, the sheriff snagged a file off the edge of his desk with a nod and flipped through the contents.

“Besides the thorough search we’d conducted,” he said pointedly. “My department has a tip line to report a crime or any missing person information that runs 24-7. There seems to be an increased need for that ‘round these parts, what with the heavily wooded areas surrounded by the Platte River and all. Things can get hairy right quick.” 

“I’m sorry,” Scully flipped open the case file and dragged her finger down the page. “Are there people who’ve been reported missing in the area and have otherwise remained as such? Because our records indicate that those who have gone missing under suspicious circumstances in the past have also returned similarly, conveniently remembering nothing.” 

Silence hung in the air like the sickening scent of cheap cologne. 

“What’re you insinuating?” Sheriff Abrams locked his narrowed eyes onto Scully, clearly attempting to intimidate her into moving on. Scully was not amused. 

Mulder resisted the urge to take this guy down a peg or two, but from the incensed curl of Scully’s lips, he knew he was about to watch his partner do it for him. 

“It looks to me that you’ve simply given up on actively working this case, Sheriff,” Scully started, arching a brow to her hairline. “It also seems as though you’re dismissing an eye witness’s account of strange lights and voices due to some sort of unsubstantiated notion that a pregnant woman may be too emotional to accurately convey a traumatic event. Please tell me I’m mistaken.”

“Now that’s not true at all,” Abrams challenged. “We looked!”

“Where?” Rebecca demanded.

“A handful of deputies searched the standard two-mile radius on foot from where you last saw Mr. Michelson and noted nothing amiss,” he continued, sweat stippling across his upper lip. “There have been no calls or new information received since for us to update you on.”

Scully snapped the file shut, her icy stare never leaving the sheriff. The poor bastard didn’t stand a chance. “We’d like to see proof of that.” 

Mulder could sympathize with the man’s bobbing throat and flared nostrils. Despite her diminutive size, Scully's challenging glare and cocked brow could leave him with clenched fists and a tension headache by the end of the day quicker than Skinner reaming his ass about expense reports. She was fierce, and always the smartest person in the room. She was frustrating and scientifically rigid and emotionally guarded but in the most wonderful way. She could also kick his ass if she wanted to. 

He bit back a smirk at that thought.

Those were only a few of the hundred and one things he loved about her.

“All right then.” The fluorescent light glinted off the sheriff’s silver badge as he stood. “You want your proof we’re doing our job, then feel free to trade in those high heels and leather shoes for steel-toed boots and trudge through the forest yourselves.”

Mulder had had enough of this guy trying to drag Scully into a pissing contest. 

“Sheriff, my partner and I would like to interview Ms. Shaw, officially,” he told him, catching Rebecca’s eye as she rubbed Ella’s slumped shoulders in comfort. “And if you could spare a deputy for the day, I’d like to take a look at the place where David was last seen for myself.”

“Hey, what the Bureau wants, the Bureau gets,” Sheriff Abrams tossed up his hands in defeat and lifted his desk phone from the receiver to make a call. “Deputy, you free today? Good, I’m here discussing the Michelson case and need you to escort two FBI Agents to the spot where he was last seen. That’s right, the FBI. Oh, you might wanna grab the equipment while you're at it,” he said with a smarmy smirk. “Seems the feds want to see Sleeping Bear in all its glory.”

The sheriff's radio squawked as he hung up. The dispatcher's voice sounded scratchy and distant as she read off names and codes. 

“Ah, hell. Copy that, Rosie,” the sheriff scoffed as he walked over to the door. "The Boone brothers are fightin’ again," he explained, in the same voice that one might mention the sky being blue or the sea wet. “Gotta take care of that before the wife tells me not to bother coming along on our vacation after all.” 

“Could hardly blame her,” Rebecca muttered. 

“Neither could I,” Abrams grunted before turning Mulder’s way. “Anyway, I’m sure I’ll end up tossing one of them in the drunk tank for the night, so I’ll let my deputy take over from here.”

“Sounds like people are offered a stay in your drunk tank a lot,” Mulder couldn’t resist adding. 

Abrams croaked out a laugh, and Mulder tried to repress the unpleasant memory of being locked up in one while chasing the Jersey Devil through back alley streets. Unfortunately, those distinct smells would stay with him forever. 

As Sheriff Abrams moved to exit, Scully took out her notepad and pulled a chair up for Rebecca to sit in. 

Before Mulder could join her, a knock on the door frame announced the presence of a petite young deputy with wavy brown hair and bright green eyes. “Hello, I’m Deputy Amelia Anderson.” She stepped into the office and politely shook everyone’s hand. “I’m told you need to see the scene?”

“We’d appreciate that, yes,” Scully said as she sat next to Rebecca and began to take notes.

The sheriff passed by the deputy as he walked out the door, tipped his hat, and said, “Agents, good luck out there. I hope you find more than we did,” before disappearing into the bullpen. 

_Asshole,_ Mulder thought. 

Deputy Anderson dipped her chin apologetically. “You’ll have to excuse the sheriff. He’s not used to having his actions questioned by authority.”

“A specific kind of authority, you mean,” Mulder said knowingly.

His cheeks warmed when he noticed Scully offering him a rare unabashed smile.

The amount of hard-assed male posturing he’d watched unfold throughout his years spent as Spooky Mulder had him well-versed in the art of picking apart his co-worker’s intolerance, especially if said authority came from a basement dweller and a woman more educated than them. 

“Thank you for helping, Deputy,” Scully praised, giving Mulder a moment to recover from her grin.

“That’s what I’m here for. I used to work in the Park Ranger’s department and confer with the Tribal Council for the area before I transferred here,” she explained, smiling warmly before nodding to Ella and Rebecca. “I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation before the sheriff called me. Rebecca, is it? I was the one you spoke to on the phone that night you called about David Michelson. I would be happy to share any updated information with you and our interview notes are available to the Bureau if needed, of course.” 

“Thank you, but I think Rebecca here can tell us everything we need to know about that night,” Mulder urged. 

He turned his attention to the missing man’s fiancé, staring up at him in determination. 

Rebecca quickly recounted details that were included in the missing persons report. Scully scanned the file, looking for correlations while jotting down any new information. It was just like other eye witness accounts in past events Mulder had kept his eye on over the years. The history of dancing lights and faint voices in the night matched up perfectly. 

The question remaining was, _why?_

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


“...then it started to storm, violently,” Rebecca eagerly continued her story. “It was intense. The lightning… Jesus, it was purple. It was like something I’d never seen before - you could feel it surrounding you. Something was very wrong, unnatural. I could feel it thrumming like a high voltage light bulb held against my skin. And then… he was just gone.” 

“I don’t see a storm mentioned in the official report,” Scully noted, searching.

“It was written in my initial intake notes, Agent Scully, but nothing official was recorded,” Deputy Anderson responded. 

Scully blinked. “I’m sorry?”

Mulder stepped forward, a rough theory forming in his mind. “There was no storm recorded by the National Weather Service that day for them to document, was there?”

“Not as much as a dark cloud within seven miles of Sleeping Bear that night,” Anderson stated firmly. “I checked.”

“But it happened all the same,” Rebecca said fiercely as she stood, a hand to her lower back as her bulging belly nearly knocked Scully in the nose. 

She blinked, frowning slightly as her eyes lingered on Rebecca’s stomach. 

Mulder’s stomach dropped as the thought of never having the privilege to witness his partner pregnant with a child of her own. A twinge of regret coiled in his gut.

_Focus, Mulder. She’s still here._

“I know what I saw and I’ll look for him myself if I have to,” Rebecca affirmed.

“That’s not necessary,” Scully intervened gently. “The fact that your accounts of that night have never changed tells us plenty. Let us do what we came here for.”

Ella stood gingerly, hooking a hand through Rebecca’s waiting arm. “I may be old, but my David is the youngest of six children and family means the world to him. He’s not gone by choice. I won’t rest until he’s home safe and holding his child in his arms.”

Scully met Mulder’s eyes across the sheriff's office.

He knew what she was thinking. The same thing she’d been thinking since she read the file. She just didn’t want to voice the increasing possibility that David Michelson may never come home. Mulder conveyed his thoughts through eye contact, their usual Do Si Do of simpatico: that this was something his family already knew yet did not want to admit loomed within their realm of possibility. 

Rebecca placed a soft touch to his arm, breaking his gaze with Scully’s. “Thank you for coming out here… for taking my statement seriously. Most people wouldn’t want to believe until it was too late.”

Mulder smiled shyly as he opened the door for all four of the women now standing in front of him.

“Lucky for David, we’re not most people.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Twenty minutes later, Mulder and Scully waved Rebecca and Ella off with a promise to contact them personally as soon as they knew something more. He hadn’t mentioned it to Scully, but even if they found the answer to what paranormal phenomena were responsible for this, Mulder would still feel like he’d failed if they weren’t able to bring David home alive. 

But the way Scully gently nudged his arm and tossed him a look of understanding, he knew he didn’t have to. 

“Deputy Anderson,” Scully called. “I’d like to go over the list of medical supplies we should bring in case we find David in need of immediate medical attention.”

“Absolutely, and just call me Anderson, please,” she corrected while pulling out her notepad and pen. “The Ranger Station has emergency trekking backpacks available for each of us. They’ll include a small sleeping bag and a single sleeper tent, flashlights, and matches, along with equal food and water rations. I know we aren’t planning on camping out overnight, but best be safe than sorry.” 

“No complaints here,” he approved. “Sleeping in the dirt while freezing our asses off wasn’t our happiest memory in recent past, right Scully? My muscles were sore for a week.”

Scully rolled her eyes, and Deputy Anderson laughed. 

“I also suggest long sleeves and jeans with the terrain we’ll be encountering,” Anderson pointed out, glancing between his Armani pants and Scully’s pristine skirt. “Also, Agent Mulder, if you need anything specific, just let me know.”

“As long as there’s food, I’m set,” he replied as he rattled the bag of seeds in his pocket. “But I would like to know how far Deerings Drive is from our motel.”

Anderson’s scrawl stopped mid loop as she looked up at him, squinting away the sun. “About five miles from here. You’d pass it on the way there. Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to speak to someone I asked about while in the precinct. Seems he’s still around, and the sheriff indicated this kind of disappearing act was a familiar one around here, and from my research, I’m inclined to agree.”

“That’s not entirely true,” she started. “Yes, people have been known to get lost in the National Forest or the Lakeshore and surrounding Dunes. But in most cases, they’d been drinking and were found within the first twenty-four hours. They’re usually shaken up and tend to steer clear of ambitious wandering in the future, though. And then there’s always the stories that keep locals vigilant.”

“Stories?” Scully prodded.

“Yeah, witches casting spells seems to be the most popular one,” she said. “Stories aside, this land is one of the oldest in the country and is officially protected by the Tribal Council here for a reason. The ancient lore and history of the land is something many believers around the world hold sacred. Hunting and lumbering are no longer allowed, and that rule is fully respected around here.”

“But that wasn’t always the case,” Mulder piped in. “There was a rather large investigation that involved loggers with missing memories here in the forest in 1938. The details of that case are eerily similar to this one.”

“Sure, I know that case and the spooky circumstances surrounding it. Everyone with a family member older than sixty around here does.” Anderson eyed Mulder for a moment, lifting a curious brow. “I’m just impressed that you do.”

“We’re kind of experts in all things spooky,” he shrugged, looking directly into his partner's cerulean eyes, punctuating his intent of gratitude.

Scully arched a brow, tucking her chin to her chest. Mulder felt a familiar urge to palm the small of her back in solidarity, but promptly repressed the overt expression of affection.

“Why don’t we get back to that list, Anderson,” she redirected, two fingers now pressed firmly to her upturned lips. 

Mulder spun around and walked back to their rental car, grinning ear to ear as he did. 

While Scully finished going through the list of supplies, Mulder popped a seed in his mouth and admired his partner from afar. Her porcelain skin and fiery hair gleamed like flawless jewels in sunlight. What he wouldn’t give to feel the cornsilk strands of her hair brushing against his skin as their lips finally, finally- 

A shrill ring coming from his pocket curbed forbidden thoughts. 

“Mulder.”

" _Mulder, it's AD Skinner. I hear you're making friends in Michigan."_

"Sir, about that-"

" _Save it. I don't care what you're up to, just play nice with the local authorities. As long as it's helping your reputation, that is. After the recent incident with you making headlines, any positive news shared while riding the curtails of one of my best agents being admitted to the Psych ward is good news for the FBI.”_

“Understood. I just assumed the 302 request to investigate would be approved when I booked the flight this morning,” Mulder explained. 

He heard Skinner sigh and imagined him leaning back in his leather chair, rolling out the Mulder-induced tension from his neck. 

“ _It is, as long as Agent Scully is with you?”_

Mulder blinked. After his near-death experience, while undercover, with a gun pressed to the back of his head, he’d decided against running off on a whim without Scully by his side. 

“Of course, sir.”

“ _Good. Keep it that way, agent,”_ Skinner said tersely before ending the call. 

“Skinner?” Scully asked as she opened the driver’s side door and held out her hand for the keys. He relinquished them with a nod. 

“He was just delivering his usual ‘keep my ass out of a sling’ pep talk.”

“In other words, don’t let you out of my sight,” she said playfully. 

Mulder chuckled and watched her expectantly, waiting for her began her usual spiel at this juncture in a case. Maybe how folklore and tales of witches and even Mother Nature herself held no scientific evidence. How not every light in the sky had an unearthly origin, even if it was unidentifiable. But instead, she paused, narrowing her eyes as she looked past him and down the winding road. 

“You said someone you wanted to talk to lived nearby?”

“Yes, about ten minutes from here.”

“Who?”

He swung open the passenger door and flicked a freshly shelled seed in the grass for the flock of birds fluttering above. 

“Elijah Bay from the 1938 case. I had a hunch he might still be around. Maybe he remembers something he didn’t back then.”

“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” she confirmed, checking her watch. “Let’s make it quick. We need to change before we head into the woods and I do not plan on spending another night sleeping in the dirt.”

“But we have sleeping bags this time, Scully,” Mulder winked, beaming.

She scoffed, “Shut up, Mulder.”

He watched her slide gracefully into the car and adjust the seat, admitting that even when it was him who sat behind the wheel, she was the one in control of the journey now. She just hadn’t realized it yet.

  
  
  
  


_____  
  
  
  


EMPIRE COUNTY 

1013 DEERINGS DRIVE

10:45 AM

The wooden porch creaked under Scully’s patent leather heels, and she could feel the escalating perspiration gathering in her cleavage. She might have relished in the day-to-day comfort of standing at Mulder’s side, but sweating through the only bra she’d packed while doing so held no comfort at all. 

Elijah Bay held open the door with a soft smile and a plump, black cat cradled in his flannel-covered arm. He leaned in, eyes squinting over his wire-rimmed glasses, his back hunched as he read their badges. 

“If we could just have a moment of your time, sir?” Scully questioned.

“Yeah, yeah, come on in. Have a seat if ya like,” Elijah nodded to the couch that sat a few feet from the entryway as they stepped through the screen door. 

The living room was simple and bright. There were two small chairs, nestled comfortably side by side, each with a different colored quilt folded across their backs. A small bookshelf built into a brick fireplace housed several old novels and photographs. An ottoman sprinkled with cat fur sat in front of the bay window. It was wide open and the room smelled of warm cinnamon and summer. 

She breathed the pleasant aroma, watching Mulder slink about the room, graceful as the cat weaving its way between his legs.

The welcoming ambiance reminded Scully of her childhood. Where love was shared and memories were made. It reminded her of a home she’d once imagined for herself years ago. And for a split second, Scully saw her aging self sitting where Elijah was now. Her at eighty-five, grey-haired and engrossed in a medical journal, reaching out for Mulder’s hand…

_Mulder._

Scully shook her head.

“...ole Stormy there likes to make a break for the trees every now and again,” Elijah continued to speak as Scully blinked back dangerous thoughts of domesticity. “That cat forgets how old she is and has a hard time making her way back home. I tell ya, she ain’t the only one either.” 

Mulder chuckled, leaning down to scratch behind the cat’s ear as she jumped up on the cushion, mewling for attention. “Cute.”

“She likes ya,” Elijah praised as the cat’s purrs rumbled loudly. 

“She’d like my fish, too.”

“We would like to ask you about the summer of 1938,” Scully explained, mentally filing away Mulder’s inclination towards fluffy black cats. 

“FBI, eh? Well, never thought I’d see the day two feds would come knockin’ on my door to walk down memory lane. And such handsome ones at that,” Elijah said, his brown eyes creasing with amusement as he stared at Mulder’s tie. “I had a tie just like that years ago; until John made me burn it.” 

“John?” Scully tried not to smile. “I like him already.”

Elijah lowered himself in one of the recliners, gesturing at the collection of photos scattered across the fireplace. “My John… I liked him, too.”

“He passed?” she asked, only confirming what she could see in his eyes. He nodded, glancing at the empty chair next to him. 

“Last year in his sleep,” he muttered woefully. “I woke with his hand still wrapped around mine.”

Scully swallowed the unwelcome rise in melancholy. She had prayed for such an outcome for herself less than a year ago. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I’m older,” he blurted, his forlorn eyes locking onto Mulder’s sympathetic ones. “I always planned to go first. I just... never wanted to live a day without him.”

“I understand that,” Mulder gave a sad smile before moving towards the framed black and white photo on the center of the shelf. Though Scully couldn’t help noticing his gaze had flicked to hers, first. “I’m assuming you know why we’re here, Mr. Bay. Otherwise, I have a feeling you’d have asked us by now.”

“Damn right.” Elijah crossed his arms. “Not one person ‘round here would bring up the year 1938 and not be referrin’ to lost time.”

“So you experienced total memory loss during your time spent within the forest,” Scully verified. 

“Yep, John did too. But the damnedest thing happened. A strange feeling replaced that lost piece of my mind, if that makes any sense. And the weight I carried on my shoulders for years before that time in the forest was gone as soon as I left it, that’s for sure.” 

“The weight?” Mulder asked.

“The fear,” Elijah clarified, pointing to the photo Mulder was holding. “That there was taken in the late 1930s, right before The Happenin’ - that’s what we all ended up callin’ it, since it damn sure happened but no one remembered it.” 

Mulder handed her the frame, the pale, white-washed images of bearded men, young and old standing side by side with axes while leaning next to old machinery stared ominously at her through the glass. Some were smiling and others just posing, a moment in time captured in front of the Jurassic-like tree line. 

“That there’s my crew,” Elijah said proudly. “And us…”

Two men stood stoic in the center. One tall and burly with thick dark hair and a bushy beard, an ax slung over his broad shoulder: Elijah. The other was a young and handsome man - slender and fit with a head full of wild curls dancing in the wind: John. He had one hand ever so slightly outstretched toward Elijah standing at his side. Through the shadows, Scully could see their pinkies hooked together in a secret promise. 

“You were in love here,” she stated. “You and John.” 

“We were,” he admitted wistfully as Scully silently returned the photo and tried not to think of love and loss of her own. 

Mulder lifted a book off of the shelf next to her and turned to Elijah. “May I?”

“That there’s a great read, Agent Mulder,” he boasted as Mulder flipped through yellowed pages. “Please, take it.”

Scully read the title and her head spun. _“Gods and Monsters and Other Improbable Things.”_

Mulder’s eyes widened. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning. 

“I’ve read many books and articles online about mythical creatures but never a book as old and informative as this.”

She watched as he turned to the Table of Contents with care, the spine creaking with age. His slender finger glided down the page as he listed off what stories were depicted within. “Witches, Demons, Elves, Fairies… Mothmen, Scully,” Mulder exclaimed, beaming in utter delight.

She rolled her eyes with mirth. 

“I don’t suppose you need more than one guess as to when I bought that there book,” Elijah commented. “Couldn’t pass it by when John and I saw it for sale in a tribal thrift shop ‘round fifty years back.”

“Lucky you,” Mulder said in all seriousness and Elijah barked out a laugh. 

“You could say that.” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “I tell ya, agents, somethin’s out there… I can still feel it in my bones.”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Mulder reminded him.

“You know, if I were you, I’d be takin’ a good long look at those chapters on magic. The Dryads and Faeries section is pretty damn intriguing, if I do say so myself,” Elijah suggested with a nod. “Can’t shake the way those drawings in there make me feel when I look ‘em.”

“I’ll do that,” Mulder said he held up the book and moved to shake Elijah’s hand. “Thanks for this, I’ll be sure to return it.”

“Naw, you keep it,” Elijah winked. “You need it more than I do.”

“We appreciate your time and the reading material, Mr. Bay,” Mulder nodded his thanks before murmuring to Scully that he would go crank the air conditioning in the car while she finished up. 

Scully watched him move gracefully down the driveway, unintentionally gaping at his muscles flexing beneath his shirt as he lazily removed his suit jacket. His tie came next, slipping from around his neck with a seductive yank. She was completely captivated until Elijah finally spoke again, tearing her gaze away from her irritatingly attractive partner.

“John was the love of my life, ya know. The one I couldn’t live without.”

She smiled. “That’s quite a sentiment.”

“It’s the truth.” His voice softened as he looked through the open window, eyes drifting between her and the rental where Mulder sat waiting for her. “Life’s too damn short to speak otherwise. I learned that lesson sixty years ago.”

Scully shifted on her heels, curious as a surge of romanticism washed over. “When did you finally…?”

“Become us?” Elijah grinned while his head lolled back against his chair. “Welp, I could say it was not long after The Happenin’ when I finally let go of my fear of loving him. But, I’d be lyin’. Truth is, he was mine and I was his that first day he stumbled through my door with his hand held out, hopin’ to be a part of my crew. We just hadn’t realized it yet.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

MICHIGAN, NORTHERN LOWER PENINSULA 

OUTSKIRTS 

ONE HOUR LATER

Golden sunlight reflected off the surface of the vehicles and equipment on their backs, making Scully feel off-balanced and light-headed. They neared the tree line where David Michelson was last seen and the leaves glimmered emerald-green as they swayed in the breeze above them. The birds sang and the scents of crisp greenery and raw earth made her languid. She could see how people could easily get lost in the moment out here. 

But lost was not on Scully’s agenda today. 

After they checked into the quaint _Cozy Cubs Motel_ , she couldn’t wait to rip off her heels and hover her face over the air conditioner. But time was of the essence, and she and Mulder were forced to quickly change into hiking-appropriate clothing to ride with Deputy Anderson to the site. Despite the heat they were feeling during the morning, their trip through the Florida forest taught them the hard way that temperature can dip to a nose-numbing degree within the dark wilderness. Not to mention, any exposed skin was like ringing a dinner bell for an all-you-can-eat mosquito buffet. Scully had tossed an extra container of insect repellent in her personal pack at that thought.

“Hey,” Mulder greeted as he stepped past her, and the heady scent of him wafted up her nose. She shut her eyes, reigning herself in. 

_No._

Maybe she should have just given in this morning and used her vibrator before he picked her up for the airport. Consistency was key. 

“Ready,” she asked, noting Detective Anderson poking at the shrubbery surrounding the entrance to the forest with a guide stick. The once rolling grass of the clearing where Rebecca and David were picnicking days earlier was now riddled with boot prints and police markers. 

Mulder rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Great,” she muttered as they approached the yellow crime scene tape the deputy had strung up between two large trees to clearly mark their exit from within the forest when the time came to leave. 

“We’ll just mark our trail as we go,” Mulder assured. 

Whether it was for her benefit or his own made no difference. They were entering this forest as a team and that was exactly how Scully intended to leave it. 

“All set, agents?” Anderson called with her compass in hand. “I’ve radioed in our departure already and agreed to report back as soon as we exit the woods again. The connection is spotty, at best, once we move deeper into the trees, but we shouldn’t have a problem communicating between the three of us.” 

Mulder and Scully both tapped the walkie talkie attached to their packs and Scully glanced down appreciatively at her Sig strapped to her ankle.

“Let’s roll,” Mulder announced while she breathed in the loamy air. 

Together, they stepped over the threshold of wiry ferns as one, leaving the safety of the clearing behind. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any procedural inaccuracies is my own fault. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the original characters in this chapter.


	3. Visions

_____

  
  
  
  


“I took her in like water, 

cool, wet, and beautiful.

But I knew eventually, 

she would spill through my fingers 

and evaporate in the sun.” 

-James Escalada

  
  
  


SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

OUTSKIRTS 

MIDDAY

The humidity was fervent and the sun was radiating enough heat to redden Mulder’s already bronzed forearms. He glanced at Scully to his right as her copper hair shifted like a brush fire in the breeze, her little legs moving fast and sure through the wilderness. A sheen of sweat had formed along her brow and the modest makeup she’d applied early this morning that concealed her spattering of freckles had already melted away hours ago.

His chest ached as he watched her and knew it had nothing to do with physical exertion. 

Scully had once told him that his beliefs were so intense that it was sometimes blinding. In reality, she was the one who shone like the sun spraying its rays through the canopy above. 

Simply put, his partner was stunning; the urge to kiss her was overwhelming.

“I think we can determine this section cleared,” she announced, locking eyes with him as if she could feel his gaze soak into her skin more intensely than the heat did. “No sign of David through here, or evidence of anything else for that matter.”

“I agree,” Deputy Anderson said as she nudged an old police marker sticking out of the ground with her boot. “This flag indicates the last point of our previous search. The Search and Rescue team stopped here.”

Mulder slowed his pace and ran a hand through his sweaty hair with a sigh. The birds that were chirping and tweeting incessantly since their hike had started were now quiet and it gave Mulder a moment to ponder what to do next, in peace. 

He started with the obvious. “I think I’ll need to visit the little boy’s room soon.” 

It wasn’t a lie. They all were chugging water like they’d been trekking across the Sahara, but Mulder could tell the weight of the gear was beginning to slow Scully down, and he knew she’d rather end up crawling through the dirt on her knees than admit she needed a break before anyone else. For him, it wasn't so much that the hike was difficult to manage, it was more that it was repetitive, hot, and featured an uncomfortable level of chafing. 

Anderson shifted through the branches with her guide stick behind him. 

“We should spread out to dig ourselves a latrine and take a break before we start through the uncharted section,” she suggested.

“Hey, I don't suppose-” a sharp twig smacked Mulder across the face. “ _Ah -_ that we can order takeout. And since we haven’t really sorted through what’s in our food supplies yet, do we have any plans for a meal?"

Scully hummed her agreement, “Pizza sounds good.”

His stomach rumbled. 

“Scully, don’t tease.”

“That’s odd,” Anderson interrupted their banter while staring at her watch. “I’ve got exactly noon for the time, but we’ve been hiking for much longer.”

Scully checked her watch, arching a brow. “Mine says twelve fifty.”

Mulder glanced at his watch slowly ticking away and then reached in his pocket to compare it to the time displayed on his phone. The screen exclaimed NO SERVICE but the time read something entirely different. 

“I’ve got one eighteen on my watch and just after two o’clock on my phone.” His mind began to race while he walked toward Deputy Anderson. “Have you checked the compass yet?”

“Well, no, we haven’t needed to since we’ve been following the path of the search markers,” she told him. Scully checked her phone too and gave him a look of concern as Anderson dug through her pack for the compass. “We should be just south of the Platte River and-oh…”

“Oh?” Mulder asked as she held out the round compass and set it into his palm. 

_Oh!_

The thin needle in the center of the compass was frozen in place. The arrow stayed poised directly on the letter _N_ , no matter how he spun it.

“Mulder?” Scully grabbed his hand to see for herself and Mulder watched her eyes bulge. “Interesting.”

“It’s stuck,” Anderson scoffed, taking the compass back and flipping it around. “I don’t understand… what the hell?”

“Could be a simple malfunction,” Scully hedged. 

Mulder didn’t believe that for a second. Heat aside, the atmosphere had changed within the last hour. He felt as if he were being watched and it seemed to set his internal paranormal antennae to high alert. He spun around, looking ahead, only to turn and stare back in the direction in which they’d just come, realizing that everything and nothing looked familiar at the same time. 

He remembered that the book Elijah had given him was inside his bag, just waiting to be utilized. He decided he needed to read more than just the few chapters he’d already snuck in on the car ride over as soon as he could. If Scully were to give any sort of credence to his blossoming hunch, he needed to withhold his concern a bit longer. At least, until he had a proper theory to back it up.

“Why?” Mulder wondered aloud while surveying the vast foliage in front of them. “Why would Search and Rescue stop where we are now? Why not continue down the hill? There’s so much left to search.”

They’d been canvassing by the book since they had entered the forest at the exact place where Rebecca had last seen David staring at the floating light through the trees. Other than the disturbed earth from the search party three days earlier, nothing notable was amiss. It was as if David Michelson stepped foot into the depths of Sleeping Bear National Forest and simply disappeared. 

“The terrain gets rough from here on out,” Anderson nodded ahead, tearing away a patch of thorny brambles tangled around Mulder’s boot with her guide stick as they began walking again. “The trails we do have are marked for safety, and beyond this section where we’re standing is not recommended to wander into. Even with tracking dogs and a larger team, we would need days - weeks even - to search the entire National Forest. And with no actual evidence of foul play…”

“The sheriff wasn’t about to search any further,” Mulder finished. Even if the team did search for weeks, it wasn’t likely they’d recognize tell-tale signs of paranormal activity. That was what he and Scully were here for. 

“What about the surrounding dunes?” Scully asked. 

“The dunes were searched by volunteers from the Tribal Council but the location where David entered the forest is nowhere near there, and no recent footprints were left in the sand. The North and South Manitou Islands just off the shore of Lake Michigan isn’t accessible without a boat, of course, it’s unlikely he would ever have made it past this point in the dark without proper supplies.” 

“He barely had proper shoes from Rebecca’s statement at the precinct - loafer-style slip-ons, she’d said.” Scully’s pack bumped into Mulder’s as she moved ahead, shielding the sunlight from her eyes. “Even if David had been of able body to hike past here that night, there is still the question of why, and where is he now?”

Deputy Anderson hummed in thought as they all made their way up an incline. 

“Able-bodied or not, I question his state of mind while doing it,” Anderson stated. “He grew up around here. Rebecca, too. They’d have heard the stories,” her voice trailed off as Mulder turned to look at her, noting for the first time that the concern on her face wasn’t only for the man currently missing in the same area they were in now. 

“I’d like to hear one,” Mulder broached a topic that he had a feeling Scully was curious about as well, though she would never voice it. “A story, that is.”

He heard Scully huff out a laugh ahead of him, her backpack bouncing up and down with every step. “The more _out there,_ the better,” she teased. 

Mulder smiled at her jab as Deputy Anderson spoke, “The Legend of Sleeping Bear is a powerful story and just so happens to be the origin of the National Forest.”

“Hear that, Scully?” he hollered, “Sleeping Bear isn’t named after the sheriff after all.”

“Shut up, Mulder,” Scully muttered, but he could hear the mirth in her voice. “Please ignore him, Anderson.”

“Anyway,” the deputy continued, pacing herself as they walked. “It’s said that many, many years ago a mother bear and her two cubs fled a Wisconsin forest fire by swimming across the deep waters of Lake Michigan. Wearily, Mother Bear reached Michigan’s great sand bluffs, but her exhausted cubs disappeared beneath the water before reaching shore. Heartbroken, Mother Bear laid down on the beach and fell into slumber, waiting forever for the cubs that would never come. So, it’s said that the Great Manitou Spirit felt the power of her love and recognized her sacrifice by covering her with sand to form the mammoth dunes.”

Enraptured, Mulder blurted, “What about the cubs?”

“Where they had slipped under the water, Great Manitou rose two gem-like islands. Today as the wind, rain, and snow sweeps over Mother Bear, warmed by the sun, she keeps her lonely vigil. The spirit of her cubs lives on forever in the beautiful North and the South Manitou Islands.”

“That’s... sad,” Mulder commented through the hush. 

“Maybe,” Scully softly added, “But also a beautiful sentiment of sorrow.”

Mulder grimaced, his mind looping back to him pacing the halls of the ICU as Scully kept a lonely vigil of her own at Emily’s hospital bedside. Her desperation and heartache were tangible things he’d wanted so badly to reach out and soothe for her. But she had pushed him away, expressing her wishes to withhold any temporary treatment to end the little girl’s suffering. Mulder held more respect for Scully’s strength at that moment than he had ever thought possible. 

A Mother’s love _was_ a beautiful sentiment, even if it was shrouded in sorrow. 

At that thought, a painful tingling sensation shot down his spine and ripped the breath from his chest. His eyes burned and he slammed them shut to will tears away, but was struck with an image that clogged his throat with unshed emotion instead...

_Suddenly, there Scully was in front of him, standing in her bedroom, wrapped in a white terry cloth robe. She seemed older, wiser, as she looked up at him, adoringly. Mulder felt himself beaming down at her in return while holding the weight of something soft and warm within his arms. He didn’t want to blink, let alone bother to glance down to see what that something was._

_She grinned at him, her ruby lips pulled tightly across her exposed teeth in a joyous smile. She was breathtaking._

_“I love you, Mulder,” she murmured, and his heart nearly burst through his rib cage. Mulder leaned down to kiss her, to breathe into her mouth just how much he loved her too, when that something within his arms started to cry._

_He gasped down at the newborn baby fussing within the crook of his arm. This was his child. He and Scully’s together. He just knew it was. He could feel the unbreakable bond tugging on his heartstrings._

_“Hey, you,” he soothed, and Scully bent down to press a single kiss to their baby’s wrinkled brow._

_“See, Mulder?” Her gaze met his again, one hand sliding intimately up his bicep. “He remembered your voice, too…”_

And just as quickly as Mulder had fallen in love with a son he never thought he’d have, the vision of the three of them happy as a family disintegrated before his eyes...

“Shit,” Mulder hissed through clenched teeth before he felt Scully’s hand on his arm. This time, it was with a worried squeeze instead of a touch of deeper intimacy.

“Mulder?” 

His eyelids fluttered open and he found himself standing back in the forest as if nothing mind-blowing had happened at all. As if he hadn’t just had the happiest moment of his life he’d ever thought possible ripped from his grasp.

“I’m okay,” he sputtered, avoiding her stare. “Uh, just a bug in my eye.”

“You should have your partner help you add another layer of bug spray, Agent Mulder, they’ll only get worse the deeper in we go,” Deputy Anderson moved past where he and Scully were murmuring and pointed off into the distance. “While you two find a good spot to break, I’ll hike up to the top of the hill over there and see if I can get this goddamn compass to work at a higher elevation.” 

Scully replied something back to Anderson but Mulder wasn’t listening in the slightest. Whatever the hell just happened had shaken him more than he cared to admit. 

And he knew something within this forest had everything to do with it. 

“Our watches are useless and now the compass, Scully? Something’s not right,” he voiced. 

Confused, he wiped fresh perspiration from his brow and started walking again. This time, Scully moved in closer to his side, arms bumping as they climbed. 

“I may have a theory about that,” Scully said. “But Deputy Anderson is going to meet us down by the Platte River after she radios in our location at the top of the hill. We need to eat something and figure out our next step.”

A cool gust of air swept through the trees and they craned their necks to let it wash over their sweat-slicked skin. 

“Hear that?” As the leaves slowed their rattling, a faint trickling noise got Mulder’s attention.

“Water,” Scully said. “Come on, let’s get a better look.”

Slowly, they pressed forward through the maze of trees and something else that had been weighing on Mulder’s mind prodded his conscience with every step until he finally broke down and spoke, “Those deputies today, the sheriff...”

“Mulder,” she scoffed instantly, hearing exactly what he was getting at. “I’m fine. I _was_ fine.” 

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

“They didn’t get to me.”

“But they got to me,” he admitted, shocking them both with his candidness.

Scully said nothing. Not a word. She just stopped moving and looked at him.

Something took over and urged him to continue, “It bothers me when… when I see you being…”

“A prime example of what male privilege looks like from a woman’s point of view?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. That was the simple answer. The more complicated one of how he could not fathom a situation in which anyone would ignore her presence nor hang onto every word she had to say was one he decided to keep to himself. “You- your opinion should be respected. Revered, even,” he rushingly admitted. “I know that isn’t always the case.”

“Thank you, Mulder,” she said softly. 

Whether it was pity for his flushed cheeks or a reason to hide her own, she bumped his arm purposely this time, letting the warm skin of their forearms linger against each other far longer than she ever had before. 

“There’s Deputy Anderson. Looks like she’s almost to the top of the ridge.” Mulder pointed out. 

Scully strolled ahead and stepped up onto a fallen log, tossing him a smug look at her ability to tower over him for a change. She raised herself on tiptoe, stretching out her five foot three frame to its max, exposing a tantalizing strip of milky-white waistline as she looked off into the distance... 

_Instantly, the tingling was back and his hands were there - on her - bracketing her tiny waist, his bronzed fingers gripping her porcelain curves as she frantically helped him strip off her pants._

_“Jesus, Scully,” he groaned at the stunning sight of her naked thighs splayed open for him. “Have I told you how much I love you?” he heard himself say, as if his yearning to subconsciously respond in kind to her in his previous vision had filled the void for him in this one._

_“Please,” she pled along his lips, reaching down to yank the crotch of her panties to the side, exposing her perfect, rust-colored curls as their foreheads rocked sensually against one another. “Please, Mulder, touch me.”_

_She was gravity; her pull on him a visceral one. And he gladly obeyed..._

Mulder blinked, gasping for air with his hands on his knees, and immediately the jaw-dropping image of his secret desires was gone as fast as it appeared. 

He stumbled, his head spinning, and his dick swelled with instantaneous arousal. He could practically feel her skin against his, taste her lips along his tongue. 

_What the fuck?_

“Mulder?”

He cleared his throat and looked up at Scully staring down at him, brow crinkled with concern. 

“What?” He wanted to finish off that question with “ _the fuck”_ and voice his previous thoughts aloud, but the expectant look on her sun-kissed face wasn’t one willing to indulge in any notion of x-rated illusions. 

“Are you okay?”

He nodded, hunching to hide his erection while outright lying outright to his partner. His throat was too dry now to string together a sentence to convince her it was the truth even if he wanted to speak. The fact was, if he opened his mouth right now, an admission of what he’d been torturing himself over for years would threaten to roll off his tongue.

“Talk to me.” Scully hopped down from her perch and swooped into doctor-mode. She cupped his jaw, her concern for him radiating from her soft fingertips as they trailed tenderly along his face and down to his neck, pressing gently against his rapidly racing pulse point. 

_Oh,_ he swallowed, feeling his overwhelming love for her spread like salve around the ache of Cupid’s arrow burrowing deeper into his chest. 

_Oh, how he loved her._

He could admit that to himself now. Could admit - finally - that he’d fallen, even with the familiar guilt of that knowledge soaking into his bones and weighing him down every time her life was in danger. He was already heavy with burden as it was. What would a few more pounds of emotional pressure really add, anyway?

He could also admit, albeit reluctantly, that nothing more may ever happen between them. That maybe this friendship was all of Dana Scully he would ever get. He feared that almost as much as he feared her loving him back. 

But Fox Mulder was no fool. He knew that even if they were to cross the line they’d silently drawn between them on the night of their first case, that timing was everything. 

And unfortunately, their timing was notoriously shit. 

“Are you going to answer me?” Scully asked, a hint of a wry smile forming on her lips as she held the back of her hand to his forehead. “Or do I need to threaten you with bodily harm?”

He smirked, despite his unfortunate arousal predicament unwilling to abate. “Promise?” 

She rolled her eyes. 

“I’d asked if you wanted to move down by the river now or if you needed to _use the little boy’s room_ instead,” Scully smirked back as she stood by his side, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. “There’s a clearing that looks promising not far from here. I can see you need to eat before we do another search.”

Mulder pulled away from her hand still exploring his face, unable to shake the remnant thrill of the vision when she was touching him like this. 

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked again.

“Sure, Scully, let’s get movin’,” he acquiesced. “And I’m sure I can find an obscure bush down there in need of watering.” 

She tsked at him as he removed a bottle from his pack and positioned it over his crotch to hide his protruding zipper, his eyes focused anywhere but on her. 

“Lead the way, G-woman.”

  
  
  


_____

SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

PLATTE RIVER LAKESHORE

AFTERNOON

The river was wide, bright blue, and beautiful. 

Scully felt the air thicken while the buzz of gnats humming around her head intensified. She glanced at Mulder as he re-emerged from the bushes, looking relieved and more relaxed than he had at the top of the hill. The flush was gone from his cheeks and the glazed look in his eyes had disappeared. 

They removed their packs from their backs with a shared sigh of relief and began pulling out supplies. When they had finally approached the alcove of soft grass she had pointed out to Detective Anderson to lay camp, they silently agreed to rest, whether they knew how soon night would come or not. 

“There’s something to be said about answering the call of nature while the thick of it,” Mulder joked. “My advice, look before you go, though. There’s now one pissed off red ant colony on the prowl that has my name on it.” 

“Better sleep with one eye open then,” she advised. 

He cringed. “You really think we’ll end up pitchin’ a tent out here tonight?”

Scully couldn’t help it, she grinned, eyes inadvertently honing in on his crotch before shaking her head and willing her cheeks not to betray her insatiable longing. 

All she could say was, “I hope not, Mulder.”

She tried to be irked about the whole spur-of-the-moment forest romping but only felt pleased that they’d survived such emotional trials and near-death experiences throughout the last year to be standing comfortably side by side instead. 

She knew Mulder held a valid concern as to why their watches weren’t synchronized, and so did she. Yet losing their ability to navigate properly was higher up on her list of worrisome priorities than mismatched minute hands and hunger pangs. Especially when the familiar and unwelcome need to be close to him she’d developed over recent years had intensified greatly since they’d passed the last Search and Rescue’s marker. 

The tug within her chest she associated only with Mulder had never been stronger. 

“Not sure what time it is, but I think we should eat now in case Anderson finds something on her way down to us,” Mulder suggested. 

“Yes, Mulder, we’ll make time for your stomach.”

Yet, time in Sleeping Bear felt like a rubber band stretching to its limit the further they traveled. Neither could gauge exactly how long they’d been searching, but it felt like hours of stumbling through the brush on the way down the hill, fighting off ticks and mosquitoes. 

The deeper they moved into the wilderness, the more Scully’s innate need to be close to him distracted her.

She scuffed a line through the sand with her boot, easily marking their spot with an _X_.

“The sand near the tree line is soft here and we can check for any fresh footprints,” she pointed out. “I think if we follow the river along the bluffs when Anderson returns, we can move deeper into the forest without worrying about losing orientation.” 

“And the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west,” he added. “Guess we’re set with the sun as long as we can see it.” Mulder looked up at the wall of clouds making its way towards them. 

Nightfall could prove a problem sooner rather than later. 

Scully raked her fingers through her hair, tucking the unruly flyaway pieces around her ears. The humidity never did anything for her naturally wavy locks but frizz it: a Margaret Scully family staple. But since they’d arrived at the river where the air is thickest, her hair had not been affected by the humidity like before. The atmosphere had shifted.

“I have this feeling, Scully,” Mulder started as he grabbed a handful of snacks from his pack and plopped down by a tree. “I don't know how to describe it, but I think us taking a look out here for ourselves should provide us with evidence of something, don’t you think?" 

His stare was both penetrating and welcome, and she forgot what she was thinking. 

She sat down next to him and nodded. “Evidence would be nice.”

Mulder unwrapped a double chocolate chip granola bar and shoved all of it in his mouth at once. He moaned, his chipmunk cheeks making it hard for her not to find the act of mastication cute.

“What, no sprinkles this time?” she taunted.

He swallowed with a mock pout. “Sold out.”

She tsked. “I’m sure the preschoolers at your local grocery are grateful you left some on the shelf for them this time.”

“There’s always next week,” he goaded. “And here I thought you liked me for my food.”

“Dream on,” she teased, hiding the amused twitch of her lips behind an energy bar of her own.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Mulder stretched out and leaned his head against the tree trunk, closing his eyes as a ray of sun bathed his handsome face in gold. “But the other half of my chili cheese fries from this morning would beg to differ.”

Scully ignored his jab at her fry thievery and took the opportunity to gaze. 

Mulder was surprisingly fit with his reckless inclination for eating junk food. But she couldn’t complain much; he was pushing forty and had the body of a twenty-five-year-old. And there was a lot to appreciate in the view. From the defined lines of his chest through his tight shirt and muscular swell of his abdomen to the generous bulge between his thighs… he was gorgeous. 

And she was breathless. 

_Jesus._

She palmed her abdomen, fingers twitching below her navel.

Sweat gathered in the valley of his collar bones, muscles rippled and curved in all the right places. Just the thought of what he could do with the most powerful one of the human body made her thrum in the exact place where she wished he’d put it... 

_A tingling wave of pin-pricks rolled across her skin and her eyes fell shut._

_She was in her bed and on her back, knees shoved against her bare breasts, her hands gripping the back of her thighs as they trembled in fervent pleasure._

_“Oh God, Mulder,” she heard herself moan, staring into his dark eyes as he hovered above her mons, his tongue - that most powerful muscle - dipping down to swirl salaciously around her clit. “Oh, my Godddd… ”_

_She was hot and wet and every nerve in her body was screaming for him to make her come. He grinned between licks and blew a stream of air across the sleek heat of her, making her nipples hard enough to cut glass. His three long fingers pumped exquisitely in and out of her, and it was then that she began to beg._

_“Please, oh yes… please... more.”_

_He kissed her slit, his mouth soft and warm as he sucked her swollen bud between his lips - and then she was flying, soaring on the wings of euphoria._

_“You’re beautiful when you come for me,” he crooned..._

And then it was done. 

The world had righted itself as the vision of Mulder loving her with his mouth simply eroded like sand on a shore. 

“...Scully!”

 _“Oh!”_ She blinked, startled at what she’d just seen as Mulder’s face came into view. Or had not only seen but felt, too. “Yeah?”

“I asked you if you were okay.” Mulder was on his knees, leaning toward her just inches away, his hand held aloft to touch her arm. There was a concerned crinkle between his brows that he’d only used on her. “You gasped and wouldn’t respond when I said your name.”

“I’m fine.” She shook her head and filed it away in her orderly cabinet of avoidance. Sadly, she had vast experience in that arena; yet she could admit this was not just one of her normal, run-of-the-mill Mulder fantasies. But then again, nothing Mulder-related ever was. “Just tired.”

She could tell he was worried. His pouty mouth was poised to respond, but he paused, handing a bottle of water to her with a nod instead, “Stay hydrated, Doc. Can’t have you passing out on me.”

Scully drank, thankful for the redirection. 

“Please,” she admonished. “Tell me you wouldn’t have a hey-day running around here looking for God knows what without me reigning you in.”

His eyes locked onto hers with such intensity it took her breath away. 

“No, Scully. I wouldn’t.”

She swallowed, desperate for her feet to regain their professional footing. 

“Mulder,” she started, nodding her head at his second Chewy bar wrapper being carried away with the wind. “Don’t you remember what I told you that night we were stuck on the rock in the lake while searching for your elusive Big Blue?” 

He leaned back against the tree, deep in thought. 

“How could I forget? You admitted you’d be down for cannibalism if faced with the prospect of starvation,” he said with a quirk of his mouth. 

There was a glob of granola stuck along the swell of his bottom lip. She cleared her throat and looked away. 

“Why do you think I’m always trying to feed you?” He smiled and tapped playfully at her boot with his. 

“Funny. I was referring to you remembering to respect nature,” she pointed to the wrapper bouncing freely through the grass. “Because nature does not respect you.”

“I do.” He reached out and snagged the trash before shoving it into his bag. “I also recall telling you that the creature - any ancient creature living amongst the human population - must have adapted its behavior over the years to minimize being seen by its only predator: us.” 

“Mm, and here we are, still searching for your white whale, Ahab.”

“What?” He tilted his head with that boyish inquisitive expression she’d always been weak for before finally licking away the crumb from his lip. 

She swallowed a whimper at the sight and plucked a handful of dandelions sprouting by her hip. She tried desperately not to think about how perfect that plush mouth of his had felt wrapped around her clit. 

_Stop it, Dana! It wasn’t real._

At that glaring fact, she shredded the handful of dandelions to bits.

“All right, Mulder, what’s your new theory?” 

He chuckled, rubbing his neck sheepishly.

“I know you have one,” Scully said. “Several, in fact. Including the one you had in the car, so let’s hear it.”

“You first,” he deflected. “You said earlier that you had a theory and I’d like to hear it, too.”

Scully relented, anxious to get this talk out of the way before Deputy Anderson interrupted their familiar dynamic. 

“Witnesses reported seeing the orbs of light only at night, in which you deem Wisps and I do not,” she started. “The moon is a symbol of energy and light, and moves in cycles. Maybe that has something to do with the lights, and possibly even the sudden weather shift that would not be predicted soon enough on the radar.”

“We’ve seen astrological disruption before,” he reasoned, and Scully cringed at the unfortunate memory of Detective White and planetary alignments. “And the compass?” he asked.

“Residual energy from electrical jolts caused by the storm Rebecca witnessed could’ve thrown off the needle,” she explained. “Even a magnetic field buried deep beneath the soil could be to blame and have been known to create optical illusions in very rare instances.”

“A vortex. It’s a good theory,” Mulder noted, but Scully knew he was not convinced. “But what about the voice Rebecca and David heard? The crying?”

“I’m not sure.” She was grasping at figurative scientific straws on this one. “Maybe gusts from the storm caused the wind to howl through the trees.”

His brows shot to his hairline. “A storm mimicking the sound of cries?”

“Well, maybe she assumed that’s what it was. The mind is a powerful influence on what we perceive as realism and fantasy,” she blurted, nearly choking on the word “fantasy.” 

“That it is,” Mulder agreed, watching her closely as she realigned her professional thoughts, silently willing the walkie talkie to interrupt them now.

“I’ve been thinking about the memory loss,” she pressed on. “The possibilities of poisonous plants expelling a mind-altering substance - a hallucinogenic dusting, of a sort.”

“Hm, not bad.” Mulder tapped his lip, eyes crinkling in amusement. “I’m just not sure any plant or substance in nature would induce the replication of a woman’s voice coupled with a glowing ball of light experienced by multiple eyewitnesses.”

Cicadas started to sing in the underbrush around them while the wind ruffled Mulder’s hair into spikes. Exactly the way her fingers would’ve done. 

Scully sighed as unnecessary frustration began to blossom. 

“So, you’re saying, what, that I’m the one looking for zebras instead of horses here?” she questioned. 

“Never,” Mulder countered. “I’m saying what if it’s some _thing_ else?” 

“I’m shocked I haven’t heard you theorize a woodland Bermuda Triangle,” she retorted, and he gaped at her. “When people wander in too deep, they get sucked in and can’t find their way out. Compasses go haywire and maps of the area are useless after entering because the landmarks begin to look the same.”

“That a girl, Scully,” he teased, delighted. 

She shrugged. “The Gunmen’s new issue arrived last week. I didn’t even know I’d subscribed.”

“Damn, and here I thought I had a ‘Dear Diary’ moment for sure,” he sighed, then hesitated, as if wondering how much to divulge. “Maybe the cause is a paranormal force facilitating some sort of mind-control.”

Scully blinked, recalling the comments made in the home of Elijah Bay about the book of cryptids Mulder had packed along on this trip.

“Paranormal force?”

Mulder grinned. “Magic.”

“No, Mulder,” she cautioned. “You believe there’s a mythical creature out here responsible for these so-called dancing orbs of light and David Michelson’s disappearance?” 

He reached into his bag and pulled out the _Gods and Monsters and Other Impossible Things_ book, flipping through its delicate pages again. He’d been so tickled to start reading it that he’d made it through several chapters before they arrived at their cabin to prepare for the search. 

“A mythical woodland creature fits,” he said matter-of-factly. 

She didn’t want to ask, really didn’t want to have another scientific-based argument with a man who always seemed to provide evidence to the contrary. But she needed to know. She always did. 

“How, Mulder?”

He smirked. “Long story short?”

“Please.”

“Wisps are what we have to go on right now and that’s rooted within fae mythology,” he began, turning the book around so she could see the illustration of a beautiful woman with vines and leaves wrapped around her slender form. Her eyes were dark and it depicted her watching a ball of fire burning brightly within her hand. 

“I knew your theory had a monster in it.”

“Not exactly,” Mulder hedged. “Some cultures believe they are ghost lights, some say they are Fairies, and some have different takes altogether. They all, however, share the theory that these Wisps are spirits or creatures that intend to guide travelers in a certain direction. To steal them for a certain length of time, and are only directed by the most powerful of sources. Question is, who’s doing the directing?”

Scully leaned her head back against the curve of the tree she was tucked under. The frustration burgeoning inside was starting to unfold.

She attempted to keep up with this rather outlandish possibility and asked, “Powerful sources? As in magical creatures that only exist in Grimm’s fairytales, that parents end up scaring their children with at night?”

Mulder laughed. That sound she loved to hear yet was so rarely blessed with made her hopeful for more moments like this one. 

“Come on, Scully, I happen to like fairytales. Kids do too, ya know.” 

“Kids like _you,_ Mulder,” Scully offered. 

She softened at that observation she’d made and privately enjoyed over the years, even as a sharp pang weaved its way through her ribcage at the thought of Mulder reading to a child of his own. 

Another prickling sensation trickled down her spine and she held her breath, fisting the grass beneath her as a tingling tidal wave swept her away...

_The wooden floor creaked under her bare feet as she peeked through the doorway._

_He was swaying there in front of the window, the bone-wite moon shining its light over the curves of his handsome face. He was older now, yet the same. Aged with fine lines, wisdom, and salt and peppered five o’clock shadow._

_He glanced up from the baby curled pliant along his chest, whimsy and in love. Yes, still the same mercurial man who held her heart within his hands._

_“Mulder,” she murmured, stepping into his warmth as she gazed adoringly at the crimson-haired miracle they’d made. “She’s still awake.”_

_He grinned and leaned down to kiss her lips with such aching tenderness that her heart raced beneath her breast. He was beaming, utterly enamored by the child they’d willed into existence together._

_And she had never been more in love…_

Her eyes snapped open in surprise and then immediately squinted under the brightness of the open sky.

“Scully?” Mulder frowned. His face was inches away from her own, his fingers tucking hair behind her ear. “What’s wrong?” 

She brushed his hand away from her cheek, unable to handle his touch without reliving what she’d just felt so vividly in her mind. Just before she could speak, the walkie talkie beeped loudly, followed by a rush of static crackling through its speaker. 

“Anderson. Finally,” Mulder said. He grabbed their only source of communication and began to pace.

She rolled to her knees and hid her face from Mulder’s worrisome stare. 

Her eyes welled and her nostrils burned with rising emotion that threatened to choke her. Mulder was speaking behind her but his words were muffled beneath the whooshing of her hammering heart. She couldn’t let him watch as it shattered, so she pushed away the vivid images and the stark connotation it invoked. 

“Scully?”

Confusion about this entire situation swiftly shifted into anger. These visions were of everything she’d ever hoped for in life and could never have. 

_Why the fuck was this happening?_

“Scully, there’s-”

A sudden thunderous vibration disrupted the tension that had settled between her and Mulder. 

They startled and she scrambled to her feet. In unison, they pulled out their weapons and spun around as their eyes scanned the ridge above for the deputy. 

“Anderson?” Scully questioned, her adrenaline soaring above her reeling emotions.

“No, there was nothing on the other end of the line. Just static on every channel,” he revealed. “Something’s not right.”

“She’s been gone a long time,” Scully said, mentally kicking herself for not trying to send her a signal with the walkie talkie before this. “Too long.”

_BOOM!_

An explosion of violet-white lightning burst through the atmosphere, blinding Scully and sending her hair on end. 

“Mulder…”

“Scu-”

Harsh gusts of wind whipped furiously around their bodies, assailing their skin with glass-like shards of water that lashed strands of hair into their faces. Scully gasped for air, panicking when she could neither see nor hear anything but the howling wind. But then Mulder was there, grasping her wrist, and instantly she could breathe again. 

Then as fast and furious as nature roared to life, everything went still. The trees were frozen in gnarled arcs. The birds were silenced with its ardor. Even the bugs that had swarmed happily around her head minutes ago had vanished. She looked at Mulder, both breathless, and he confirmed her suspicion with one loaded look: that Deputy Anderson was nowhere to be found. 

“Scully?”

“I know.” 

They were lost and now completely alone in the one of the oldest, uninhabited forests in America.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Legend of the Sleeping Bear and her cubs is a real one and so is the actual National Forest located in Michigan’s Northern Lower Peninsula. I really hope every one who has read this far is enjoying it and I cannot wait for you to see what happens next. (Within the next few days I will be posting the remaining chapters.)


	4. A Storm Was Coming

_____

  
  


“A storm was coming 

but that’s not what she felt. 

It was adventure on the wind 

and it shivered down her spine.”

-Atticus

  
  
  


SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

HEART OF THE FOREST

DUSK

The clouds were heavy and ripe with water, waiting to pour the brewing storm’s ardor upon their heads. Mulder and Scully were lost and she was emotionally exhausted. 

After Deputy Anderson disappeared during the rogue storm surge, Scully suggested they leave their meeting place and find her. This time she and Mulder marked their path with stones like they had learned from their guide in Florida, just in case they were to get turned around or Anderson was able to somehow circle back in an attempt to meet up with them again. Mulder held no concern of trickster Mothmen stealing them this time, yet it was clear something abnormal was lurking within the wilderness. 

She just wasn’t ready to conclude it was anything that could not be categorized or easily referenced. 

“Over here,” Mulder called through the trail of slanted trees and curled branches. “Look, these are our stones we collected at the lakeshore. They’re the same ones we dropped on our way up here a while ago, but we’ve never been in this part of the forest before. Have we?”

Under the tabernacle of trees, small stones had been dropped into the dirt. Each one seemingly leading their way deeper into the unknown, pointing them in a direction they’d never been until the orderly trail trickled off into sporadic madness. 

A state of folie à deux they could relate to. 

“I honestly don’t know, Mulder,” she admitted. “Deputy Anderson could have left them during the storm surge…” she trailed off, frustrated. 

Her shoulders ached, she peeled off her backpack and removed her final water bottle to share with Mulder. The temperature had dropped some, so they were no longer sweating and risking dehydration like they were this morning, but they would need to either hike back down to the Platte River again or find a stream nearby for more water soon. 

“Where are you going?” Scully watched Mulder jog down the narrow pathway toward a large stone propped up against a large tree stump. Countless rings were circling what remained of the once mighty oak. She could tell that whoever culled this tree did it the same way Elijah’s crew had once done. 

“Check this out,” Mulder shouted.

She followed - of course, she did - and knelt next to where he was squatting in front of the flat-faced stone. It had an ornate design of swirls and contoured letters drawn across the surface that looked like it was somehow seared into the rock itself. 

“Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.”

“Expecting a white rabbit with a working watch to cross our path? Because I’d be pretty damn excited,” he mused. “How about a talking caterpillar smoking a hookah?”

“Perhaps,” she smiled. Sometimes she did feel like Alice free-falling down a rabbit hole. “Maybe they could tell us where the hell everyone is.”

Scully traced the lines burned into the cool stone with her finger. “It’s a pattern.”

“It’s a rune,” Mulder countered. “And I’ve seen it before.” 

Shucking off his pack, he retrieved the _Gods and Monsters_ book and leafed through the pages, pointing to a drawing similar to the one beneath Scully’s hand.

“A rune, drawn by Fae to alert others of their presence. I knew it,” he said excitedly. “There’s your evidence, Scully.”

She blinked, stunned both by his bold statement and the way his tongue tantalizingly swept across his bottom lip. “ _Mine?_ And I hate to poison your paranormal bouquet, but I’m positive this does not prove anything.”

The onslaught of visions she’d been struck with had left a profound mark on her mood. She did not know how to feel about anything at the moment other than that she was grateful that Mulder was still by her side, even if he did test her patience. The invisible rope that had always tethered him to her had never been shorter. The elemental aspects of this case were severely impacting her ability to refrain from simply shoving him against the nearest tree and fucking the smirk right off his face. Right here, right now. 

“Hey,” he sighed. “All I’m saying is that this is proof that something wrote this and it sure as hell wasn’t an astrological disruption or any electrical field buried fifty feet under us that did it.”

“All it proves is that it was some _one_ ,” she corrected. “Look harder. I think I’ve seen something like this before myself. I took a foreign language course in college and had to learn Greek. This looks very similar.”

Mulder smiled. “German and Greek, Scully. I’m impressed.”

“You shouldn’t be.” She arched a brow, smirking. “You don’t know everything about me.”

“I didn’t say it surprised me,” he murmured, leaning in enticingly close. She felt his every exhale tickling her cheek. “But you do keep me guessing.” 

She watched his eyes flick to her mouth, then down to linger on the gap exposing her cleavage that her button-down shirt so generously provided. 

She repressed a moan and explained, “Germanic linguistics stems from ancient runic symbols, as does Ancient Greek. And if I recall correctly, this means Cursed One or Burning One.”

“Cursed One is written right here,” Mulder told her. He flipped to a chapter in the book he must have read already and nodded. “Elijah was right. It’s under the section labeled, _Dryads: the immortal Fae of the forest.”_

“Mulder,” Scully tsked and stood, wiping off the dirt from her jeans. 

_Cursed One?_

Was it a curse to not be willing to extract herself from the man that affected her more mentally, physically, emotionally than anyone else in her life? Perhaps, but it was a damn good thing Scully did not believe in curses. 

“What, no good?” Mulder quizzed as he handed her the book to see for herself and roughly shoved the water bottle back into his pack. Their situation was affecting his mood, too.

“The fact that the rune translates into anything I can decipher indicates it was likely made by a person who knew the language,” she said over her shoulder as she walked back down the pathway. “Could be a member of the Tribal Council Deputy Anderson mentioned, or even the deputy herself, especially if she left behind those stones for us to find.”

“You think she’s out here leaving us paranormal breadcrumbs like we’re Hansel and Gretel?” Mulder scoffed, standing in front of her now, his shirt stretched teasingly tight across his chest.

“No, Mulder.” Scully rolled her eyes, feeling an unwelcome surge in irritation. “That would make her a witch in this fairytale scenario, wouldn’t it? And witches do not exist.”

The wind picked up again with one strong burst. The motionless leaves and branches once frozen in place fluttered back to life and echoed through the air. Above, summer storm clouds began to churn. Both were too agitated to comment on the ominous tone that settled around them as nature awoke. 

“Anderson!” Mulder yelled into the void. “Holler if you can hear us!”

“Jesus,” Scully grumbled. “If she’s lucky, she was able to get the compass to work and made her way back to the clearing.”

“We’ll find her,” Mulder said, sounding so sure, even as fat droplets of rain started falling through the canopy above. 

“We’ve got the walkie talkies.” Mulder slung his pack across his shoulders while turned to follow one of the paths the stones pointed to.

“And they don’t work,” she reminded him.

The clouds twisted angrily in the west, blotting out half of the sun’s rays as the sky rumbled thunder. Something took hold of her at that moment, digging deep into the recesses of her innermost thoughts that left a shiver down her spine. Something as dark as the swelling storm. 

He prattled on, “She couldn’t have gone far and-”

“We’re not out here to find _her,_ ” Scully snapped, surprising herself at her outburst while she waved her arms about before letting them flop to her thighs with a resounding slap. 

He flinched. She didn’t even blink. 

“In case you’ve forgotten amidst the mysticism of Fairies, Goblins, and Lord knows what you’ve been reading about, we’re here to find David Michelson - hopefully still alive - and get the hell out of here before we end up needing a search party of our own,” she seethed. “And I don’t know about you, Mulder, but I’d rather not rely on the sheriff to be on the ball with that.”

Mulder’s jaw dropped. God help her, his shock was as endearing as it was exasperating. 

“Look, there’s something unnatural going on here, Scu-”

“Christ, this is Florida all over again.”

He took offense to that, she knew, outright balking at her renewed frustration toward a closed case. She could tell in the vehement way his head was shaking back and forth. He’d been right about that case. She knew it, and he knew she knew it. They had saved lives; together, even if they did end up in a centuries-old hole fighting Mothmen for their own. But she could not tamp down her bubbling emotions.

“Is this why we’re out here, Mulder, just another romp in the wild to chase cryptids? Because I thought we were here to solve a mystery, to close this case by finding a missing person and… I thought…”

She thought about how angry and lost she was a year ago knowing she was about to die from a disease that was given to her. She thought about how Mulder never gave up on her, not once, even when she’d given up herself. She thought about how badly she wanted to live if only so she would not be leaving Mulder behind in a Scullyless world. She thought of how badly she’d wanted to be a mother when the opportunity presented itself, only to have that chance slip through her fingers like the sand left behind in her daughter's coffin.

But mostly, she laid in bed alone at night and thought about the good things she did have. How they all revolved around the man standing in front of her and how badly she wanted more of those good things with him. More _of_ _him._

“You thought…?” he urged. 

Scully had thought a lot of things.

She snatched up her backpack, tossing the book inside as she began tearing through the contents within, trying to find a flashlight. “Nothing.”

“Scully-”

“I don’t know what I thought, okay? I’m just tired.”

This time it was Mulder who rolled his eyes. “This again?”

“Want to clarify what you mean by ‘ _this’?”_

“You, shutting me out,” he challenged.

She chuffed, “Please, as if you’re an open book.”

“Hey, I’m trying here, okay, and you just won’t admit…”

She froze, pinning him against the tree with an icy stare. “Go on.”

He opened his mouth to speak, to yell, to tell her how much he cared? Who knew, because nothing came out of it. Mulder just clamped his mouth shut and blew a chest full of air through flared nostrils. 

“Forget it, Scully. Let’s just solve this case, okay?” he glowered, digging out his flashlight from his pack and handing it to her. 

“I still stand by my initial opinion I offered in the car: that this can be explained by natural phenomena. Even more so now with the added evidence of compass malfunction. Barring confirmation of the Greek rune’s origin, a strong magnetic pull would explain many of the previously unexplainable events here, Mulder.”

“So what, you’re suggesting this part of the forest is formed around a meteor of some sort?” he asked in his serious tone. “That possible extraterrestrial phenomena is to blame for the rune, the weather, the lights and voices, and the missing people with their missing time?”

“Mulder, you know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then, by all means, Scully,” Mulder gestured for her to continue. “Tell me what you do mean.”

“I don’t want to argue about this.” Scully moved past him, pack half-zipped, walking in the opposite direction he had been heading. “We need to find Deputy Anderson before it gets any darker.”

The rain tapered off to a trickle, but the atmosphere was thick with moisture, and the tension was only rising. 

“Come on, Scully, if we want to figure out where and why everyone is disappearing before we stumble upon a pair of bodies, then we need to talk this out,” Mulder sighed, running a hand through his damp hair, unintentionally mussing it the way he did in the mornings before he had his coffee, blurry-eyed and boylike. 

_Sexy._

That thought only fueled her annoyance. She slung the heavy pack over her shoulders and looked him in the eye. 

“Fine. I’ll tell you what I meant.” Her voice was laced with aggravation. “Nothing about this case is adding up, you’re right. But my professional opinion is that nothing you’ve suggested nor read in that book of fantastic tales holds an ounce of scientific water.”

“So you really think this is a cut-and-dried missing person case?” Mulder retorted, seemingly aghast that she’d stand by her scientific theories without proper evidence to support otherwise.

“No, _cut-and-dried_ would not include me admitting to a clear occurrence of phenomena here,” she amended primly. “Just don’t scoff at the notion that it likely stems from anything other than your paranormal folklore.”

Mulder pursed his lips, his fat bottom one jutting out in annoyance. 

_Good,_ she thought. She was annoyed, too.

He waited for some cue from her, choosing his words wisely. She, on the other hand, could hardly tame her short-circuiting emotions.

“Forget the dancing lights for a minute,” he suggested. “You’re completely discounting the crying woman in the woods.”

“I’m not saying the fiancé didn’t hear anything,” she told him through gritted teeth. “I believe her statement. I am saying the power of suggestion can be overwhelming when adrenaline is high.”

“Scully!” Mulder’s tone was laced with both agitation and amusement. “You’re saying when Rebecca admitted that her thoughts had strayed to her childhood stories before she saw the lights and heard the voice, that what she experienced was what, a manifestation?” 

“You’re twisting my professional opinion into something it’s not.”

He closed the gap between them and studied her expression, trying to decipher her thoughts. 

“Scully, we know folklore is rooted in reality.”

She had witnessed her fair share of incredible things over the years and believed in her partner without a shred of doubt, but she refused to believe in lore and fairytales just because he had read them aloud. 

“It’s still fiction, Mulder.”

“Yet still not out of the realm of extreme possibility,” he reasoned. “There’s something here, Scully, a power… You have to have felt it, too.”

She blanched and bit her lip, unwilling to admit she had. If she voiced what she’d seen within her mind, she would have to analyze why she saw it and what it meant. It was also likely that Mulder had seen something similar, too, and that thought left her alarmingly dazed.

“You’re reaching,” she coaxed, trying to rationalize it. 

“And you’re not.”

“Mulder, just think about what you’re saying. Who, or what could possibly have the power to direct the forces of nature? No, don’t answer that,” she huffed, hand aloft. “I can just see your report now - supernatural manifestations originating from a forest-dwelling creature who summoned unsuspecting people into a black hole of foliage.”

They eyed each other evenly. 

“That’s my hypothesis, yes.”

Scully took a deep breath, restraining the urge to both shake him and kiss him senseless. “And I don’t share it.”

They held one another’s gaze for a long, loaded moment, a mysterious gleam shone in Mulder’s eyes as the last ray of sun hit his face.

“And I wouldn’t expect otherwise,” he damn near purred. He was enjoying this.

Scully blinked, a flame of arousal flaring low in her gut. 

_Damn him!_

“Good,” she husked, turning away from him before he saw the flush she felt rising up her neck. “Let’s go.” 

“After you,” Mulder said as he reached out and palmed her lower back, shocking her with a snap of electricity that tingled through her hips and hummed within her bones. Then without warning, her eyes were rolling back into her head…

_The last stream of sunlight shone crescents on the black pools of his eyes, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the unbridled storm of lust swirling within them. She stepped into him, just a breath away, unbuttoning her flannel shirt, willingly baring herself to him._

_She was letting go._

_“Do it,” she ordered, her fingers fumbling desperately for her zipper. “Do it now.”_

_“Scully,” he groaned and gladly obeyed. Frantic kisses peppered along her mouth, her face, her neck, and she was utterly delirious for him._

_She ran her hands through his hair, fisting it like she’d so badly ached to do as Mulder yanked down her jeans without hesitation, panties tearing in an erotic rip. Before she could beg him to hurry and please, please just fuck her already, he gripped her hips and spun her around in a blur, her fingers grasping for purchase along chunks of bark._

_“Yesss,” she moaned, his lips pressed tenderly to her temple and her mouth fell open in a soundless plea for more. He wrapped an arm around her ribcage, eager fingers plucking at her nipples as he chanted her name in her ear. His cock was rock hard against her hip when he leaned over her shoulder to kiss her; hard. The taste of his tongue caressing hers stole the breath from her chest and she felt like she was falling._

_Falling over the edge…_

A twig snapped loudly and Scully’s eyes flew open. 

She was clinging to a branch, fully clothed, standing a foot away from Mulder, and reeling. 

“Jesus,” she gasped, breathless and bereft. 

Nothing happened. It was all in her mind. 

Again.

_Sonofabitch!_

Mulder startled, “Scully?” Concern creased his forehead. “You look very flushed. Maybe we should-”

“No,” she rasped, weak-kneed and ready to burst. “It’s nothing.”

“Bullshit,” he chastised. 

Fox Mulder: always so concerned for her well being yet completely fucking clueless of her raw desires for him. 

She swallowed, mouth dry as bark. She couldn’t make the feeling stop: his heart hammering against hers. His hands roaming her skin. His reverent kisses cascading across her face. His desperate grip and welcome weight pinning her to the tree...

The images of their outdoor tryst might be gone, but the effects of his touch lingered like a fingerprint.

“I’m fine,” she lied and quickly walked past him to continue to hike through the brambles in hope of finding the right trail. Only now, her nipples tingled from the phantom strokes of his fingertips marking her body with his presence. 

Sexually frustrated and confused, Scully marched on, ignoring Mulder’s scrutinizing stare. 

“No, you’re not,” he stated, unwavering in his rigid stance. 

“We have to keep moving,” she called, worried he would see through her walls. That he would see what she’d been hiding for years. She was afraid that if she looked him in the eye, if she let him see even a glimmer of lust still rushing through her veins, that she would take it upon herself to make these visions a reality. Even if she did yearn to do exactly that. “It’ll be pitch black soon.”

Mulder said nothing, but she felt his eyes on her back as she walked away with a quivering chin and a flame for him still burning hotly within. 

  
  
  


_____

SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

HEART OF THE FOREST

NIGHTFALL

The massive trees were haughtily large as he and Scully crept through the maze of twisted roots and branches wound into unnatural shapes. The noisy rustling of leaves only added to the ominous feeling that they had entered the epicenter of some serious shit. 

Mulder inched closer to Scully walking alongside him, just needing her within arm’s reach, focusing on the steady rhythm of her inhales and exhales and matched them with his own. 

“We should talk, Scully,” he finally said, breaking the silent stalemate they’d been locked in since they had left the rune’s location some time ago. 

He heard her exhale over the cicadas shrilling and other nocturnal creatures skittering about as they roused from slumber. A pregnant pause hung in the air as he waited for her response.

He felt guilty for arguing with her. Even though their verbal sparring and nose-to-nose challenges were what they thrived on as partners, he damn well knew she had experienced at least one assailing vision like he had. Though, these visions were nothing like the ones he’d experienced last year when he was so desperate to find out the truth about Samantha while Scully was suffering from cancer. His quest for justice had increased triple-fold when the threat of Scully’s survival was building like a typhoon. Those visions, while visceral in their own way, were moments plucked from his past. These seemed to be images evoked from untapped ambitions within his subconscious mind: a wish-fulfillment. 

_Hope._

Mulder wanted to gather the courage to explain what his heart’s desire had conjured within his mind in hope that she would do the same. He ached to, but the constant fear of pushing her away because of his dangerous pining for _more_ was merciless. 

“Okay,” she lamented softly. “But if you want to talk about our opposing theories, I’d rather not.”

“I don’t think talking about forest Fae is at the top of our priority list right now.”

“I agree.” Her eyes were narrowed on the pathway in front of them, but he watched with a smile as the worrisome crease between her brows smoothed away with ease.

They took two more steps and stumbled upon a steep ledge, gasping at the sudden shift in terrain. A soft whooshing sound whispered up from the crevasse at their feet. 

They shined their flashlights out into the inky abyss in a crisscrossed pattern that formed an _X_. Dark shadows of the voluminous trees swaying with the cooling breeze only added to the disorientation they were feeling as they found themselves leaning over the edge. 

Scully instinctively reached out to clutch his shirt, yanking him against her. Her nails were biting into the flesh of his hip with the force of her grip, and he would be lying if he said he wouldn’t receive a thrill at seeing the marks she would inevitably leave behind.

“Jesus, don’t move,” she ordered. “The ledge could collapse and then we’d really be screwed.”

“You were right,” he offered, scanning his light across the rushing stream at the bottom of the ravine, guilt jabbing at him with every minute they remained lost and unable to find David or the missing deputy. “This _is_ Florida all over again.”

“No, Mulder,” she sighed as her flashlight beamed down on the wet rocks below. Slowly, she released his shirt from her death-grip and let her warm hand linger along his waist. “It’s not. I don’t know why I said that. We helped people then, and whether we’re lost or not, we are helping people now, too.”

A flicker of something shiny wedged between two rocks near the stream caught Mulder’s eye. 

“This forest, Mulder… I-”

“-See that?” he pointed out, aiming the light on the metal object. He inhaled sharply when his mind registered what it was. “It's an antenna.”

“It’s Anderson’s walkie talkie,” Scully revealed. They looked at one another, eyes widening at the implications. 

“Come on.” Mulder shucked his backpack off and swung it around with one arm as he juggled the flashlight with the other. His boot slipped with the weight of the equipment and its swaying momentum caused him to lose his balance, his upper body jutting over the edge. 

“Oh, fuck!” he shouted. The pack flew from his grasp and tumbled down the slope, plummeting into the water with a splash as he scrambled for purchase along the dirt.

“Mulder!” Scully tugged his arm just enough to keep him from nose-diving but not enough to keep his feet on solid ground. 

“Shit!” he yelped as the last bit of soft earth crumbled beneath his weight. Scully’s grip slipped free, sending him rolling backward feet over head down the slope and tossing him face first into a pile of rotting leaves. “Ugh... ouch.”

He heard Scully shouting his name from the top of the ridge but the only thing he could focus on was Anderson’s broken walkie talkie laying next to him, and marks of two different pairs of footprints leading a trail away from it. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


“Jesus, Mulder, you scared the hell out of me!” 

“Sorry,” he coughed, pain shooting through his spine. His eyes snapped open as he flopped over to his back with a groan. 

“Was it too much to ask that you answer when I called your name?” Scully questioned. “I would threaten bodily harm again but it seems unnecessary now.”

She was hovering over him with fists perched upon her tiny hips, a flashlight held in each hand, and a brow arched to her hairline. She had fresh smudges of dirt on her forehead and chin, and her hair was a tangled mess. 

“Again, sorry. I guess I was too busy getting my ass kicked by the branches on the way down to respond.” 

He rolled to his knees, back cracking as he did. Grabbing the walkie talkie, he stood and hissed when Scully reached out and touched his neck. “ _AH!_ That stings.”

“You’re bleeding,” she sighed. “Anything else hurting?” 

“Besides my ass and my ego? Nothing I can’t live with,” he grunted as he inspected the broken radio. “Looks like Anderson left us a goodie.”

“And some bread crumbs, too.” Scully pointed to each pair of footprints hardening in the mud. “From her and hopefully David Michelson.”

One set was smaller and clearly made by hiking boots. The other pair was larger and imprinted deeper into the ground. But the treads on those set shoes reminded him of the kind Frohike had unfortunately kicked off in his apartment last week. They weren’t meant for activewear, that’s for sure. 

“Let’s hope you’re right,” he said, tucking the useless communication device in the pocket of Scully’s pack: their only one left. “We should find a flat space in a clearing so we can use the moonlight to set up camp with _your_ supplies. Who knows what time it is but-”

“-You’re hungry,” she finished, unable to hide her smile. “But first, let me clean that cut, okay?” She motioned for him to lean against the nearest tree where the branches sagged with age and pulled out the travel-sized first aid kit. “When I told Anderson to pack this, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use it on you,” she teased.

“But I’m your favorite patient,” he flirted. Shamelessly this time. He could feel the urge to do that and so much more ratcheting higher and higher with every passing hour. 

This forest had taken a stranglehold on him, and Mulder wasn’t sure his will was strong enough to fight its grip anymore. 

“You’re my only patient with a pulse,” she clarified, ignoring his pout. 

Scully situated herself between his bent legs and leaned in, gently cleaning his wound with care. Her little body fit so perfectly within his and he couldn’t help but think about what it would be like if she climbed into his lap right now and let him kiss her.

As if on demand, his limbs began to tingle, shooting electric zaps through his fingers and toes. This time, Mulder braced himself for what was about to happen with rapt enthusiasm…

_She cradled his face while she straddled him, pinning him roughly beneath her lithe frame, mouth devouring his as she sucked his bottom lip between her teeth. Her hips swirled and rocked against his pelvis, his stiff cock ready to burst through denim._

_“I want you,” she gasped softly against his cheek before tilting her head back with a moan when he squeezed the globes of her perfect little ass. “All of you.”_

_He groaned into her skin, pecking and sucking the tender flesh of her neck as she moved her hips faster, practically fucking herself against his bulging zipper._

_“You’ve always had me,” he promised, sealing it with a tender kiss to her lips…_

Mulder jerked at the sound of Scully’s voice, thunking the back of his head against the trunk of the tree. He kept his eyes squeezed shut as he slowed his heavy breathing, not ready to look her in the eye and allow her to see the gluttonous gaze of lust he knew would be shining within his. 

“Hey,” Scully said as she cradled his chin. “Look at me.” 

He cracked open one eye and saw her just an inch away, studying his reaction to the flashlight searing his cornea. “Ah, hell, that’s bright!”

“Just checking,” she chuckled, patting his cheek. “I’m done and looks like you’ll live to endure another day of ass-kicking.”

He laughed but felt the overwhelming compulsion to speak his mind in return with force. Scully was right here in front of him, lending him support in more ways than he’d ever deserved. He could not let this moment pass by.

She moved to stand and Mulder tapped her hip to stop her. 

“I wanted to talk to let you know that I didn’t just drag you out here to chase cryptids through the woods out of some sick thrill to test the bounds of science, Scully. I did it because… because it’s what we do, and I do know something unnatural is happening to us. I’ve seen things...”

Her eyes fell shut. “Mulder.”

“ _You’ve_ seen them too, Scully, I know you have.”

She stared at the ground, biting her lip in thought.

“I think…” she started, “I think we see what we want to see out here. That the environment is affecting our perceptions and allowing us to believe what we want to believe.”

“And what do you want to believe?” he couldn't help but wonder. 

“I… I want to believe in a lot,” she breathed, looking everywhere but at him. His already racing heart hammered harder against his sternum.

“Me too, Scully. You have no idea how much.”

“I think I might. But right now, I believe that you believe, Mulder,” she proclaimed, glancing up at him to see the proof on his face that he believed her in return. “But I need evidence to support that as fact. That’s my job.”

He smiled, beyond grateful for this woman crouching in the mud of a mystical forest with him simply because she chose to do so. Her strict rationalism challenged his theories, saved him from his paranormal tunnel vision over and over again. Truth was, Dana Scully had given his life true purpose the day she shook his hand.

He covered her cool hand with his warm one, rubbing his thumb across her baby-soft skin. Their eyes locked and danced to a familiar song together under the gibbous moon.

“Just think, it could be worse, Scully,” he whispered, clinging onto the loaded moment as long as she’d allow.

She smirked. “Enlighten me.”

“I could be lost out here without you.” And he meant that in every aspect of his life. Not just here and now, stranded in another forest, searching for more missing people in the dark.

“I know,” she said softly, a wistful lilt coating her acceptance of such a confession. 

Maybe she always had.

A slow-rising howl pierced their bubble of intimacy. A lone wolf calling for its pack sounded closer than Mulder was comfortable with, especially with the fresh scent of his blood wafting through the breeze. 

Scully withdrew her hand from his own and announced, “Well, I think that’s our cue.”

“Yeah,” he agreed as his jumbled thoughts began to focus back on the case. 

Mulder unstrapped the sleeping bag and the pop-up tent attached to Scully’s pack. He sucked in a breath as realization struck that not only was his pack now floating freely down the Platte River, but so was his sleeping bag currently tied to it. 

He shone a light on Scully as she finished packing up the med supplies and looked down at herself for the first time since she’d rushed down the hill after him. She frowned at the thick layer of mud and collection of pickers weaved into the cotton of her shirt. 

“Damn,” she groaned. “Add this and the chili-stained blazer to my never-ending list of damaged work attire. Skinner will be thrilled.”

Mulder barked out a laugh. 

“You could submit a form for a whole new wardrobe from Bloomingdales, and Skinner wouldn’t bat an eye.” She blinked in confusion before waving away such a ridiculous idea. “Don’t worry, I get a double-dose of ass-chewing for both of us.”

“We should find a spot to keep watch near where we saw the footprints in case the owners circle back around,” she redirected as she strapped her backpack on. “And I don’t want to risk straying too far from a water supply to set up camp for the night.”

“Oh, does this mean you’ll be singing another rendition of _Joy to the World?_ ”

“Sorry, I don’t do encores.” She pursed her lips, holding back the smile he could see tugging at her mouth. “But almost six years in and I have yet to hear Elvis from you.”

Mulder scoffed, “I’d never insult The King like that, Scully.”

She held the light over her face so he could get a good look at the _gimme a break_ expression she’d honed to perfection over the years. 

“Okay, okay, but I only serenade while in the shower,” he grumbled, blushing.

“I know,” she said cheerfully, patting him once on the chest before weaving her way through the brambles. 

He followed her, grinning ear to ear. He was so focused on the petite redheaded woman who so effortlessly owned his heart, that he missed the pair of glowing lavender eyes watching them as she led him through the darkness. 


	5. Gods and Monsters and Other Improbable Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a packed full of goodies so any descriptive feedback you’re willing to give is appreciated!

_____

  
  
  


“The trick to life 

is to have the courage

to walk down the path 

that’s lit up your heart.”

-Atticus

  
  
  


SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

CAMPSITE 

MIDNIGHT

The sky was inky-black and boundless. The evening storms had washed away any stray clouds to expose the thousands of silver stars that depicted ancient images of Greek Gods and their legends. Legends, not unlike the ones written about in Mulder’s book currently resting upon his lap, splayed open to images of deceptive Wisps and magical Fae.

Scully shifted along the soft moss by the campfire she’d made not long ago while Mulder had set up their tent in a clearing overlooking the apex of Sleeping Bear. They’d eaten what meager snacks she could find within her pack and managed to boil the river water over the fire until Scully deemed it safe to drink. What could be lurking on the other side of the tree line as she warmed her hands over the heat entered her mind. 

Goosebumps stippled across her skin as a feeling of being watched made her hair stand on end. Was it plausible for the source of this phenomena to be a creature that manipulated thoughts and carved runes of warning into rock? 

She was starting to think that Mulder’s theory wasn’t all that  _ out there _ anymore.

An owl hooted as it crossed the sky and Scully remembered there were still dangers of the natural kind posing threats as well. The tell-tale sound of a fox vocalizing in the distance startled them both. She stiffened, then inched her way a little closer to the Fox sitting next to her. 

As Mulder read on, Scully shut her eyes and allowed herself to silently pine for the moments now embedded in her mind. To yearn for the dirty little secrets she’d kept hidden beneath her protective armor; even from herself at times. It was becoming more and more difficult to act like she didn’t want more from her cancer-free life. That she didn’t want more from Mulder. She had even attempted to show him once, ironically during the same forest-based case she’d thrown in his face earlier tonight. 

_ What should she have said? “Wine and cheese and sex please?” _

She rolled her eyes at that sentiment and glanced at him, calm and content at her side. A burst of cold air swept up their backs, and his familiar smell surrounded her. She breathed him in, filling her lungs with his woodsy, masculine scent. Her lashes fluttered as her body’s lingering arousal sparked hotly between her thighs. 

_ It could be so easy to lose herself in this, _ she thought.  _ So easy to just cover his mouth with hers and strip herself bare for him.  _

But was she willing to risk their partnership, their friendship for the feel of his body finally surging into hers? Was she willing to risk finality? That was the problem: the fear. The act of intimacy  _ was final _ and could not be undone. Finality was also proving to be the only outcome anymore. 

Fox Mulder was an overly stubborn, obsessively driven man who wore a scarlet  _ X _ on his chest with just as much pride as she did. His flaws were no greater than her own. 

And she had fallen in love with him for every one of them. Maddeningly and terrifyingly so, but in love all the same.

“How long do you really think we’ve been out here?” Mulder broke the silence, idly tracing the shape of the rune they’d seen that was sketched in one of the pages of the book. “My watch still isn’t working.”

“Feels like days,” she told him honestly, rubbing out the ache in her neck. 

He snapped his head up. “Maybe it has been.”

“Mulder, no,” she sighed wearily as she watched the embers of the dwindling flames pop like fireworks into the void. “We left early this morning. And as you know, time is a universal invariant, whether our watches work or not.”

Exhaustion tugged at her resolve to charge headlong into the woods and continue searching for David and the deputy. It also hindered her willingness to jump into another heated theory-based discussion with Mulder.

“Oh I don’t know, the very plausible state of Oregon rings a bell,” he teased.

“Too bad you left your can of red spray-paint in the rental,” she quipped back.

She stared at Mulder shaking his head and thought about their argument during the storm. How her raw emotions and the underlying irritation seemed to bubble to the surface as fast as her arousal for him did. She ruminated on the visions that were assailing her mind throughout the day. Visions she yearned to see in real life. 

Visions that Mulder apparently also shared. 

She simply sat and watched him as time slipped by, studied his thoughtful gaze and fidgeting limbs through the plumes of smoke. She watched him now watching her; and Scully couldn't remember a time she'd ever seen the wheels in his head move faster. 

Except this time, she had no idea what direction they were turning. If she had to guess, he was berating himself for their current predicament and was conflicted about her knowing it. Likely role-playing an uncomfortable conversation about what they each had seen play out within their heads.

She wondered how he thought it would end. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, scooting even closer to him lounging against a log. 

He slung a warm arm around her shoulders, pulling her flush to his side. 

“The legend of Sleeping Bear, actually,” Mulder answered, peering down at her as she gazed up at the starlight. “The idea of it is kind of incredible, don’t you think? To need something so desperately that the power of it manifests itself into a tangible symbol of immortality.”

She hummed at him waxing poetic and had the overwhelming urge to run her fingers down the curve of his chest and over the dip of his sternum as he spoke. 

For the first time, bravery burst its way through her fortress of self-control, and she did just that.

“Oh, I don’t know, Mulder,” she husked, her hand moving on its own accord, drifting down to trace the swell of his abdomen, feeling his sharp inhale beneath her palm. “Isn’t that what love is?”

Mulder smiled, her upturned face just inches from his. He breathed out her name, his green eyes focusing on her parted lips and-

A high-pitched yowl echoed through the trees, followed by multiple yips and howls. 

“Shit,” Mulder pulled away, frustrated, running his hands through his hair. Scully could relate. “Uh, we should probably… probably pack up what’s left of the food and sit in the tent for now,” he stuttered while shoving the book and supplies back into her pack. 

“Okay.” She blinked and slowly stood, still dazed after such an erotic moment. “The wolves just want to be left alone.”

“Usually, but they’re close and I do have dried blood on the collar of my shirt,” he said, unzipping the tent and waving her in. “We can take another sweep of the area after they're gone.”

Scully settled in on the lone sleeping bag in the one person-sized tent and removed her boots with the light of the fire burning itself out just feet away. 

Mulder had to bend in half to fit through the entrance. She bit back a laugh and watched him remove his boots while trying to hide the bulge within his jeans. He helped her lay out the blanket and gazed at her as she laid down on her side. Their first night as partners on their first case looked very much like this tableau before her. Except, this time she was wearing more than just a red robe and an innocent smile. This time, she planned on wearing nothing and acting on impulses that were anything but innocent. 

“Come here, Mulder.”

He gulped, “You sure?” 

She stared unblinkingly into his eyes through the dying ember’s glow. “Please,” she pleaded, breathy and willingly vulnerable. “ _ Please, _ Mulder.”

With a nod, he slid into the bag beside her, sides touching shoulders to hips but nothing more without her permission, and her heart swelled even more. 

She felt the familiar weight of emotional repression that she’d been wearing like a bulletproof vest unravel from around her chest. She was finally tired of being afraid to risk it all. She was tired of the loneliness. 

Scully inhaled the cool, crisp air, holding it in until her lungs burned. 

Did she ever truly want a partner in life who wasn’t Fox Mulder? 

_ No. Never.  _

It had taken her a long time to see that without denial. To look past her stark fear of what could be if they weren’t both looking into the abyss and decided then to look at each other. But no, she didn’t want anyone but him.

“I’m sorry, Scully. I feel like this is somehow all my fault,” he said, fumbling around to grab her hand. She felt like it was an apology for more than just tonight.

“Don’t be sorry.”

He scooted closer and she leaned into his warmth, watching the beautiful slope of his chest rise and fall. She was letting love consume her. 

_ Oh God _ , how she loved him. She was tired of denying that of herself. 

She twined her fingers within his and he turned to kiss her, just a brush across her forehead. Her eyes fluttered shut, fully content with him just being near her. But Scully wanted more.

Her heart began to beat rabbit-like with endorphins as she finally chose to give in to her most illicit desire, and to break one of her fraternizing commandments: thou shall not fuck thy partner in a paranormal forest. 

“You’re right, Mulder, something  _ weird _ is happening to us,” she justified softly. “And I have to admit I’m not sure I can explain it away. And I’m not sure that…”

“What, Scully?”

“...that I want to anymore,” she confessed, sliding her free hand through his hair.

He shook his head. "I don’t deserve you."

"We deserve each other, Mulder." 

He squeezed her hand, eyes locked with hers. “I want you so much, but I’m afraid. I don’t want to hurt… this.”

This time the silence was thick, laden like cold tree sap dripping down jagged bark. 

“I trust you,” she breathed. And she did. She always had. “Now kiss me, Mulder.”

He swore under his breath and grazed his warm lips across hers, softly sealing their mouths together. She nearly lost all traces of time as he pecked and sucked at each lip before she bit down on his pouty bottom one like a predator in the night. 

He gasped, and she grinned.

“Scully, is this real? Because I don’t think my body can handle another taunting vision,” he choked out, pleadingly desperate for this to be real. 

The dread of being sucked out of this moment and tossed back into their reality of repression was something Scully feared with visceral intensity. She nuzzled her nose along his warm cheek and pressed a tender kiss to his stubbled jaw, dragging her lips across his mouth, hoping to anchor them in the here and now. 

“I know my heart couldn’t handle anything but reality with you, Mulder. Not anymore,” she boldly confessed, undoing her shirt and bra, exposing herself to him.

She wanted reality, no matter how complicated it was. 

“I think I’m beginning to understand that the things we wanted to see in our subconscious - our hidden yearnings - were manifesting in the visions by some sort of surge of magic,” he rushingly said as she tore off his shirt and ran her hands seductively down his stalwart abs. 

“Mulder…”

“Our visions stopped at a specific point where realism wanted to take over for us experience it in real lif-”

“-Mulder,” she interrupted, hushing him with a finger to the cushy arc of his lips. He was nervous. “I want to experience this, not talk about it. Badly, in fact. So can you just… stop talking?” She pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Please?”

“I-yes, I can do that,” he rasped and finally reclaimed her mouth with his. 

They kissed eagerly, until they were left breathless and bare of all clothing until she was hot and slick between her folds. Her world tilted on its axis and she clung to his warm body now firmly pressed against hers. He sucked in a mouthful of flesh at the exact moment his erection - steel-like and fire-hot - sunk against the softness of her belly. They both gasped as her slender fingers wrapped around the thick girth of him. 

_ He’s huge. _

She flushed, as if a hot flame scorched through her entire body, and she was well aware that it settled deep in her cheeks. His eyes were dark and soft as his arms wrapped gently around her and pulled her on top of him. He kissed her neck as she dragged her thumb over a vein curling up the side of his cock, and he sucked in a mouthful of her flesh.

“Scully,” he whispered against her skin. 

“Jesus,” she mewled, desperate and slippery with want. 

She moaned as she straddled his hips, her thighs malleable and lax. She felt warm and ready like her body knew this thing happening between them was perfect and right. It was her mind that needed to  _ see _ it in order to believe. 

“I’ve dreamed of this. Of you,” Mulder exhaled, voice thick with awe as his hands roamed her body, thumbing her taut nipples. “Am I dreaming, Scully?”

“No,” she husked, her thighs hugging his waist. He was throbbing now, heavy against her clit as she rocked along his shaft. “Because then I’d be dreaming, too.”

She shifted her hips and sank slowly onto his cock with a sigh. She could feel every single curve and ridge of him stretching her to the max.

“Fuuuck…” he exhaled. He was filling her, so deeply that her lungs ached. For a long moment, she stayed still, him filling her completely, both of them moaning in unison.

“Mulder…”  _ They’d waited too long to do this, _ she thought as his fingers bit into the dip of her waist. “Make love to me,” she told him before he pulled her mouth down to his and devoured her very soul.

They said nothing else. There was no need for speech when, wordlessly, their bodies sang the song of sultry satisfaction for them. He didn’t have to ask what she wanted; she told him with the swirl of her hips and the flick of her tongue. 

He clutched the globes of her ass as his hips snapped up, plunging the crown of his cock against her G-spot faster and faster, his muscles quivering. She rewarded him with a kiss to the strong line of his jaw, keening with pleasure along his cheek.

Making uninhibited love with Mulder in the middle of nowhere felt suddenly like she was ascending from a drug-filled haze. Like an effervescing addiction for the man writhing against her, she’d known she had yet never indulged in. It was a sickness of sorts. 

And she was irrevocably unwell. 

"Scully," he murmured against her throat, and she squeezed her walls tighter around him as he pistoned through her folds. 

“I’m- oh, Mulder,” she cried, rocking faster, fingernails carving half moons into his shoulders.

He raked his fingers through her hair, bringing her mouth to his as she rose and fell in his lap, and that was all it took. She came swiftly with a yelp, quivering inside, rippling around the hefty length of him. 

“You’re beautiful when you come for me,” he whispered, just like in her vision. 

Just like in her dreams at night.

He moved even faster then, deeper, his pelvis meeting hers with a clap. Her breasts bounced and spine arched as she rode him into oblivion. Another crest of euphoria washed over her, making her writhe like a flickering flame above him. Just as suddenly as her second orgasm came, so did he. He spilled into her, fingers gripping her skin as her name rolled off his tongue in raucous reverence, shattering like broken glass.

_ Now _ , Scully thought.  _ This was magic. _

They collapsed, sweaty and sated. Her head rested on his heaving chest as her heavy eyes fell shut.

“Wow, Scully...”

“I think the wolves are gone now,” she exhaled after a pause, voice raw with lust as they watched the fire die.

Mulder huffed out a laugh. “Maybe we should’ve tried it to scare off the Mothmen,” was the last thing she heard him say as sleep pulled her under. 

  
  
  
  


***

_ CRACK! _

Scully woke with a start. 

A loud crunching noise cut through her post-coital slumber. She wiped the string of drool from her cheek, then quickly swiped the wet remnants from Mulder’s chest. 

She couldn’t help but notice his renewed erection pressing into the softness of her inner thigh draped over his hips. The edge of the sleeping bag had slipped down his pelvis to show the dark thatch of his pubic hair. Her clit swelled again at the sight. She moved her leg and slid one manicured finger beneath the blanket, amorously circling the crown of his stiffening cock, fighting the urge to straddle his hips again. 

“Scu…  _ oh, god _ ,” he moaned, his eyes flying open. “Is… is this your way of asking yourself if this is real?”

“No,” she whispered while palming the scruff of his jaw. “Just reminding myself that it is.”

He grinned as he fisted the hair at the back of her neck and kissed her hungrily. 

The tent smelled of campfire soot and sex. And before she could contemplate how earth-shattering of a moment this was for them, Scully heard the noise again. This time it was louder, coupled with a thumping sound and snapping twigs. 

So did Mulder. His lips froze against hers in an open-mouthed kiss. 

“Something woke me,” she mumbled along his bottom lip before pulling away and reaching for her clothes. “And it did not sound like wolves.”

Mulder reluctantly followed suit at her urgency and quickly dressed, though she loathed to see it.

They stood near the flap of the tent, breathing heavily, weapons and flashlights ready as they listened. Scully shivered at the cold night air wafting through the cracks.

Mulder leaned in to wrap his arms around her, and she willed the heat of him to somehow sink through the cage of her ribs and keep her warm forever. She was deliciously sore already. Sated and well-fucked - well- _ loved _ in the most amazing way possible. 

Grateful, she reached up to trace the curve of his face, and-

_ BANG! _

They both jumped, scrambling to unzip the tent. 

No sounds of bullfrogs croaking. No cicadas singing or owls hooting. Nothing but deafening silence. 

“That sounded like a gunshot to you too, right?” Mulder asked as they tore through the tent and into the night.

“Yeah, maybe Anderson?”

The campfire had burned itself out and puffed out a thick fog of smoke, making it hard to see.

He nodded. “Let’s hope.” 

An ear-piercing scream resounded through the entire forest, startling a flock of birds into the leafy canopy above. Mulder adjusted his gun and flashlight, beaming it into the dark void. 

“Come on, Scully!” Mulder hollered, taking off through the brush in a sprint. 

She followed close behind, leaping over brambles and arched roots, weaving her way through curled branches and unnaturally bent trees. 

A bright orange light flickered through the murky darkness ahead. It wasn’t coming from Mulder’s flashlight. She held her Maglite out, shining her light through the haze to identify the source. The ball of light bobbed and swayed as she ran and Scully squinted in an attempt to see the person carrying it. 

“Mulder,” she called, watching him jog toward it and the shimmering wall of mist suddenly surrounding it. Adrenaline surged through muscles still trembling from their ardent lovemaking and she picked up her pace to catch up. “Mulder!” 

“Scully?” she heard him yell as he disappeared behind an oversized tree trunk, just as her boot slipped through a soft patch of earth at the base of an oak tree, pinching her ankle between two twisted roots. 

“Fuck!” Scully cried out, crumpling to the ground. As she wiggled her foot to free herself, she looked up and saw another rune freshly burned into its bark. Her eyes widened as she touched it. It was still warm. 

Realizing she and Mulder were not alone, she opened her mouth to warn him, but the sound of twigs snapping off to her left made her freeze. 

“Who’s there?” She swung her weapon around, arms extended, flashlight in hand as a silhouette of a person hunched over in the distance caught her eye. “Federal Agent, come out with your hands up!”

“It’s me, Agent Scully,” Deputy Anderson replied, hands raised as Scully shone the light in her face. It was covered in dirt and thin scratches. She looked exhausted. “It’s me and I found him,” she announced, “Jesus Christ, I found him.”

Behind her, a weary David Michelson slowly emerged through the haze. And Mulder was nowhere to be found.

  
  
  


_____

  
  
  
  


THE HEART OF THE FOREST

“Mulder!” Scully screamed.

Mulder tore his eyes away from the dancing light ahead and glanced over his shoulder to respond, but Scully was no longer behind him. He scanned the cluster of massive old growth trees with his flashlight, hoping to see his partner pop out from the shadows, but saw nothing. His heart hammered harder against his ribcage. 

“Scully?” He spun in circles, frantically flashing his light through the dense growth of forestry “Scully!” he hollered into the chasm of darkness and whistling wind. 

He couldn’t lose her. Not in this blackhole of a forest and not ever. They had just made love for the first time for the first time and he’d already fucked it up. He blinked, his eyes stinging.

That’s when he saw it: a gossamer wall of rippling air arcing around him. A single, dark cloud spun ominously above as he reached out to touch the shiny mist. His hand poked through with ease. Just like his body had while running… while chasing a Wisp, he realized.

“Sonofabitch!” He stepped forward to walk through the force field and find Scully when he saw two figures staggering through the foliage just yards away. He froze, shining the flashlight out and gasped. One was Deputy Anderson tucking away her gun. The other, an injured man slowly limping alongside her. Behind them, two bleeding wolves laid motionless in the dirt. “Hey, Anderson!” he called, narrowing his eyes. “Mr. Michelson?” he questioned. He hoped, but neither flinched.

“No one can hear you,” a feminine voice cooed from behind him. “You are invisible.”

Mulder jerked around, aiming his light, yet saw nothing but an enormous Great White Oak with an  _ X _ carved into its center. The tree was surrounded by gnarled roots and ornate vines looping around its trunk. 

“Federal Agent! Wherever you are, step out with your hands up and identify yourself,” he ordered with his weapon held aloft. 

“You are not in charge here, Mortal,” she said, her tone firm yet soothing. 

Unexpectedly, the center of the robust tree pulled apart at its core, yawning open into a maw of whirling bark. Mulder’s jaw dropped the exact moment his Maglite did. He watched it roll through the grass toward the glowing purple light now emanating out from the core of the tree. The brightness left him momentarily blinded. When his eyes fluttered back open, he saw her. A woman wearing a torn gauze-like dress that billowed out around her thin body, and she was standing just a foot away. 

Mulder could only gawk at the sight before him, stunned to immobility. 

As she studied him curiously, he did the same in return. Her crimson hair extended in waves, looking like it was moving underwater. Multicolored leaves adored the crown of her head and trickled down each wispy lock. Skin, the color of shimmering gold, had ivy wound around every petite curve. A tangle of roots spiraled out from her toes with every step. Her eyes gleamed an amethyst purple, bold and awe-inspiring. Just like the violet-white lightning they had witnessed within the forest. Her voice, when she spoke, was calming, soft and melodic - a lull. 

It shook him into submission. 

“I have been waiting for you, Believer,” she confessed, moving elegantly around him. “Waiting for far too long.”

Violet lightning zapped across the sky, followed by a cacophony of thunderous booms. 

Mulder flinched. “Wh-who are you?”

“I am many things,” she grinned, teeth as stark white as the blazing sun. “Why you are here is what truly matters.”

He had to keep her talking. That goddamn Wisp sure did its job separating him from Scully. He’d let her down. Again. Now, he needed to make up for it with answers. 

“Okay then, why am I here?” he asked boldly, regaining his composure. 

“I see your fear. You reek of it,” she prodded. Mulder squeezed the stock of his Sig tighter. She noticed. “Not the fear one can see on the outside, Mortal, just like the fear that beamed from ones who have come before you.” 

“The loggers?” he quizzed. “Elijah?”

She raised a pointed brow. “One of many.”

”I knew it, the book… he was right. You  _ are _ Fae.”

She shook her head, hair flowing like ribbons in the breeze. “I am a Dryad. A powerful one.”

“Shit,” Mulder huffed, shaking off the thrill of witnessing his theory proven correct. “Wait, you said you’ve been waiting for me? How?”

She nodded, eyes fluttering as purple-flecked tears brimmed along her doe-like lashes. 

“I punish mortals for hurting my trees, but not as much as they punish themselves inside,” she started, and Mulder lowered his weapon as she spoke. “I showed them what great love they would be missing if they continued on the path they were on: suppressing and resisting their soul’s mate.” 

“The visions,” Mulder accused. “That was you.”

She bore her catlike eyes into his, her pupils swelling like the lump in his throat as another bolt of lightning tore through the atmosphere. 

“And it is you,” she retorted. “You are frightened you shall lose the one you love by telling her what lies within your heart.”

“I…” Mulder trailed off, overwhelmed at what she could see in him. Was his love for Scully that obvious? He suddenly found himself relieved that someone, -anyone else knew. “To openly love someone is to put them at risk. I’ve already done that a hundred times over. And if I tell her...”

“Then she shall know,” the Dryad urged. “And she too shall be free of the loneliness.”

The winding knot in his chest began to loosen, but his worry for him and Scully’s separation intensified. 

“My partner, is she okay?” Panicking, he checked his watch. A fruitless act as it would not tell him what he needed to know. “How long have we been apart?”

The Dryad tilted her squared chin upward as she eyed him ominously. “Time? Your mortal coil of time is meaningless to me.”

“What? So, hours could have passed since I stepped through that veil of yours? Days, even?” He spun around, ready to dash back through the force field and sprint back to find Scully when he heard a loud swishing noise behind him. Then felt something wrap tightly around his ankles and wind its way up to his knees, cementing his feet to the ground. “What the fuck?”

“You cannot leave, Believer,” she hissed. “I need your help.”

Mulder jerked around, nostrils flaring as he tugged on his restraints he could now see were vines growing from the Dryad’s body. “My partner needs me. Why should I help you?”

“Because I am the Cursed One!” she cried, pain lacing through her tinny voice. Vines crept up his legs and tightened around the denim of his jeans, squeezing his straining calves and quads. The dim light of the moon and the muted beam of his flashlight bathed her in a menacing silver light. “And I shall show you  _ why _ .”

Mulder sucked in a breath as her stick-like hands snapped up and gripped his arms. His eyes slammed shut, instantly struck with a sickening tingling sensation shooting up his spine, far more intense than any of the previous sensations his vision’s inflicted. His head spun as a vortex of technicolored light whirled around his head like a merry-go-round. He opened his eyes in panic when it all suddenly stopped. 

It was then that Mulder realized time truly was not a universal invariant...

OLD-GROWTH FOREST

ANCIENT GREECE

_...Flashes of violet lightning cut through the sun-soaked sky of the royal court. Her profound emotions controlled the elements, made her magic spark hotly like a roaring fire consuming everything in its path.  _

_ She could not control the unbridled storm she produced when her fear, anger, or jealousy blossomed beneath her skin, nor could she control what secrets lay within her heart. _

_ “Princess Seraphine, a ruling has been made,” the queen stated calmly, turning to her husband, the king.  _

_ Seraphine knelt before the royal thrones, her sheer dress billowing within the rising wind.  _

_ “Princess Seraphine, you shall finally be mated to the Satyr, Alistar, to bind your magic,” her king - her father’s voice boomed through the ornate forest’s court. “It has been decades and you have chosen to delay what the gods have foretold for us all. You have no choice. An heir you must create!” _

_ “Father, no,” Seraphine choked. “Please, my soul’s mate does not belong to Alistar.”  _

_ In fact, it did not belong to a Satyr at all.  _

_ “Enough, it is done!” her father demanded. “You may never know your soul’s mate. You know how rare it is to bind your magic to another and be each other’s eternal soulmate. You need not love in order to create an heir.” _

_ Seraphine did know, and that was precisely why she had vehemently delayed the god’s demands to commit to Alistar or any Satyr. She eternally belonged to someone else.  _

_ “Your magical gift of sight is a special one, my child. Do not squander it by refusing.” _

_ “But my ability to see glimpses of the future does not allow me to see my own, Father. How could I foresee if I was ever meant to create an heir?” _

_ “The gods will punish us all - they will curse us if you do not continue our bloodline. I shall be forced to curse you, Daughter,” he finished with a glare. _

_ Seraphine wanted to speak up, to finally admit she had found the other half to her soul’s whole, but the familiar stab of fear prickled down her spine. She could only cry out a defeated, “NO” as she turned and ran from her king.  _

_ A cacophony of screams chased Seraphine from the arched trees surrounding the Dryad’s court. Only one thought swirled through her mind as her bare feet bounded across the earth.  _

_ She had to find her. She had to get to her and explain before a jealous Alistar did. He had wanted her badly and she had refused him, shamed him in private. Yet now that she had openly denied a future mating to bind their magic, it was only a matter of time before he would find out why and seek his revenge. Her chest began to ache at that horrible thought. _

_ Finally, Seraphine heard a familiar voice singing the song she had sung to her many times before. She ran to her sitting near a pond, her heart skipping beats like a pebble tossed across water. There was a primal pull every time she saw her. An elemental storm swirled within her chest when they touched. And when their lips met, her eyes rolled and their magic sparked together in joyous unison.  _

_ It was a cosmic connection - one her soul could not survive without. Seraphine was in love, and she would risk herself to protect it. _

_ “Cassia,” Seraphine breathed, grasping her hand. “It has happened. My father has… he called me to court and declared me mated. He has finally demanded I produce an heir,” she cried, panicking with the knowledge of what wrath was bound to be cast upon her.  _

_ “Oh, gods no! Please,” Cassia begged, clutching Seraphine’s waist, holding her tightly against her. “Do not submit to binding your magic with Alistar. You…” she started, her tinny voice clogged within her throat. “I cannot live on if you do.” _

_ Seraphine’s chin quivered, wrought and breathless. But they both knew that was not true. That no matter what, a Dryad’s spirit would never die. It would only be reborn elsewhere in another place, in another time.  _

_ Alone. _

_ “Nor can I live on without you.” Seraphine’s soul yearned for her lover’s soul and her lover’s soul only. She tucked the wavy tendrils of onyx and silver hair behind Cassia’s pointed ears and cupped her soft cheek. She savored this moment she knew may not last. “I shall never be bound with Alistar for I cannot, nor will I, love any soul but yours.”  _

_ “But your father, the laws… the gods will never allow us to be bound and mated without our ability to produce an heir,” Cassia frantically reiterated. “We shall be Cursed Ones.” _

_ By refusing to be mated to a Satyr - a male Fae of the forest to bind their magic with and create an heir - Seraphine would be separated from Cassia. _

_ The ache in Seraphine’s chest was unbearable. _

_ “Yes,” Seraphine agreed. She knew this, yet she now understood she could no longer hide her love for Cassia within the shadows of the trees. All she had ever wanted was to express the adoration she felt for her soulmate to her father and the gods in hope that they might understand the power of true love, but deep down she’d always known it would be futile. “They shall punish me.” _

_ “No!” Cassia argued as she held Seraphine’s tear-stained face between her palms, their foreheads pressing together. “They shall punish us both.” _

_ The realization that Seraphine was too late to amend their fate struck her in the chest like a lightning bolt. A torrent sensation of anger for her own cowardice washed over her and amplified the pounding of her heart, causing a rumble of thunder to boom off in the distance.  _

_ They had no good way out of this forced arrangement. No way for Seraphine to erase her long-standing fear of failure and prove her and Cassia’s love for one another was more powerful than any heir could ever be. All she could do now was beg for forgiveness. _

_ “I am so sorry, my love,” Seraphine sobbed. “I am sorry I was too afraid to risk this… to risk us.”  _

_ Cassia gasped as their mouths collided in earnest. Seraphine’s tears coated their lips as they kissed with decades of unbridled passion.  _

_ Time slipped away as they held one another close. Vines and flowers bloomed across their tangled limbs as their mouths expressed a passion that words could never create.  _

_ “You,” Seraphine murmured along Cassia’s lips. “You showed me how a love like ours can turn even the darkest, coldest realm into the happiest of homes.” _

_ “I love you,” Cassia said, and just as she went to reply in kind, strong hands gripped her arms and yanked her body away from Cassia hard enough for Seraphine to cry out in pain.  _

_ Her spirit then reached out the tree she was bound to nearby in order to heal itself.  _

_ “NO!” Seraphine cried while two Satyrs surrounded Cassia, holding her back to separate them for good, just like she had feared all along. “Do not hurt her!” _

_ In that moment, Seraphine felt she deserved to be punished for not pleading for her happiness to her father decades ago. She had let fear control her. It had held her back. It had hurt the one she so intensely loved. _

_ Maybe she deserved to burn. _

_ Cassia called out her name, and their watery eyes locked together through the trees. _

_ Seraphine, choking on her grief, could only mouth the words “I love you, too,” before they dragged her to the oak tree her spirit had attached itself to on the day of her birth. Several hands held her against its bark as the tree began to open up for Seraphine to enter inside. As long as a Dryad’s spirit was attached to a tree’s life force, they would thrive for eternity. But if that tree were to burn, a Dryad’s spirit would be set free into the universe, no longer tethered to that place.  _

_ Seraphine was about to know what being untethered felt like. _

_ Her father appeared before her with a harsh gust of wind. The roots that sprouted from his legs burrowed into the ground as his emotions flared. He was sad, she could see, but that would not deter him from punishing her with a curse the gods demanded he bestow upon any immortal Fae who misused or refused their magic.  _

_ Seraphine stared at her father, her king, and announced, “I love  _ her… _ and the only thing I am sorry for now is keeping that hidden.” _

_ He could only smile sadly with a look of respect twisting his serious features, as if he were actually proud of her bravery. But it was too late, they both knew she would never submit to the laws of the gods.  _

_ His eyes slammed shut while a tear rolled down his green-tinted face. And with a flick of his thorny wrist, a wisp of fire shot from his palm and engulfed her in an orange blaze.  _

_ Cassia wailed in agony as Satyrs restrained her. Seraphine watched through the flames as Cassia flailed her willowy limbs wildly, screeching into the darkness as she watched Seraphine and her tree burn.  _

_ In that moment, Seraphine felt the tether of her spirit that had been wound within the mighty oak tree snap like a twig, hovering above the only home she had ever known.  _

_ While Seraphine’s spirit beckoned nature to rescue her as the flames destroyed her body, she felt herself transform into a creature of the sky. Her arms morphed into wings in a blink of an eye. Red feathers sprouted from every inch of her golden skin as her toes stretched, sharpening into black talons… and then she was flying. _

_ Her physical form had burned to ash, but her spirit was reborn.  _

_ Cassia, dismayed and grief stricken, fell to her knees while vines shot out from her tiny body and wrapped themselves around the Satyr’s limbs, squeezing them in fury.  _

_ “Seraphine!” Cassia sobbed. “I shall wait for you, my love, I shall wait forever.” And then she began to sing… _

_ The next thing Seraphine witnessed was a kaleidoscope of scenery flashing before her eyes as she flew through a vortex of space and time. Suddenly, she burst through thick clouds with a booming sound of thunder and could see a massive body of water underneath her.  _

_ She had no idea where she was, but below her as she flew through the air, she witnessed a large mother bear struggling to swim as her two cubs sank to their watery graves. Recognizing the desperation of nature, Seraphine’s magic extended downward to immortalize love’s sacrifice forever in the form of a giant dune and two small islands... _

Another whirling twist of colors blinded Mulder, pulling him back into the present with force.

“Jesus,” Mulder choked out as a wave of nausea slammed into his gut. The hands gripping him loosened as he dropped to one knee, swallowing back a surge of bile. He snapped his head up to see the Dryad, Seraphine, staring down at him with a forlorn expression. “But I don’t understand. After all that, why lure David Michelson? He was happy and committed with a child on the way…” he sputtered before he caught a look of guilt in her eye. “You were... jealous?” 

She sneered, turning away from him.

“You were jealous,” he repeated, seeing everything in a new light. He could practically hear the Dryad’s multi-faceted motives falling into place in his brain like cogs in a lock. 

“Envy existed eons before you mortals did,” she stated. “I felt their happiness thrum through the forest floor like a heartbeat. And for a moment, I wanted another to share my pain. I should not have sent a Wisp for him, it is true,” she admitted. “But their love shall be stronger for it in the end.”

“I-I’m sorry that happened to you,” Mulder sympathized. “Truly, but I can’t help you now.”

She just smiled sadly, her lavender eyes shimmering with unshed tears in the moonlight.

“You can and you will.”

His anger flared.

“How? You made the others forget...” Mulder scoffed, his voice trailing off as the realization knocked the air from his lungs. 

The others had forgotten. Elijah, John, every other logger that exited this forest had forgotten it all. If Mulder and Scully left the wilderness of Sleeping Bear the same way, they could forget everything that happened while in it. 

_ No! _

“They all forgot,” Mulder repeated as the understanding of what he and Scully could lose hit him. Irate, he tugged at the web of vines still slowly winding up his hips. 

“I have done nothing they have not thanked me for in the end,” she admitted as a strong gust of cold air blew his hair back. 

“Why do you do all of this? Why lure people out here to teach them a lesson, toying with their heads by planting images in their minds, only to make them forget when they leave?”

He watched her stare flare like lightning through her long, curled lashes. 

“Because, you foolish human, the memories of how they felt while seeing them are what matters. I only offer visions of what  _ could be  _ if they would just face their fears and give into love. The emotion behind what they see comes from here,” Seraphine tapped the willowy ribs over her heart with one razor-sharp nail. “You, on the other hand, have a chance to have both.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“If you grant me my greatest wish, I shall return the favor.” She spread her arms out wide and sucked the vines back from their grip around his legs. They made eerie scraping sounds like slithering snakes as each one wound itself back around her tiny limbs. 

Mulder stumbled back, blinking rapidly, still trying to process what the hell was going on and how to get him and Scully out of this mindfuck of a forest with their memories still intact. Yet one question tugged relentlessly in the back of his mind, and he wanted the answer. 

“Why me? Why now, thousands of years later?”

“You believe,” Seraphine said in awed relief. She unfolded her moss-dappled fist and thrusted an orange and white fireball into the air. It hovered there, soundless and entrancing, reminding him of the thousands of UFO sightings recorded in his VHS collection tucked away within his desk drawer. It was the Wisp that he and Scully were chasing. “Only you can do what is forbidden in my world in order to reap the reward.”

Mulder swallowed, his fear of fire raising its ugly head as she gestured for him to hold out his palm. 

_ Fight the fear. _

He gasped. The burning Wisp was as cold as ice as it flickered and swirled an inch above his splayed fingers. “And what reward is that, exactly?”

“Freedom,” Seraphine whispered as she moved towards the Great White Oak with authoritative grace and an air of dignity Mulder had witnessed Scully possess on many occasions. Her eyes slipped shut as she stroked its bark tenderly, letting her vines extend out from her lithe body and meld into the opening tree. “Freedom for us all.”

Seraphine and the massive tree were becoming one entity - one being. 

She could have killed those loggers back in 1938 for harming nature - an extension of herself - but she hadn’t. She had spared the men and seized the opportunity to utilize her own painful past and help Elijah through his fears of letting love in. 

She’d set him free, even if he could not remember how. 

“You must burn me,” she said desperately, her voice slipping into a whisper as a serene smile spread across her beautiful face. “So my soul can finally reunite with its mate.”

Mulder shook his head, stunned. “But…”

Seraphine just held up a palm to silence him, moss growing rapidly along her golden skin. 

“Cassia has shared my loneliness long enough,” she said, and then began to sing…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most folklore states that Dryads/Nymphs were beautiful and cunning Fairies of the forest who lived in and around their trees. They were born with/in their trees and their spirits were eternally bound with them and primarily found in old forests of Ancient Greece. There are many different kinds of Dryads/Nymphs/Fae but the general consensus is that many were mortal and some immortal, each with different powers. A Satyr, which is also depicted in this ch is defined as a male Forest Faerie and females were Dryads or Nymphs. I took certain liberties with the mythology and put my own twist on Mulder and Scully’s cryptid.


	6. Where Real Magic Resides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The definition of the Greek-rooted name Seraphine is “burning one,” which I found fitting.

_____

  
  
  
  


“We were together 

I forget the rest.” 

-Walt Whitman

  
  
  


HEART OF THE FOREST

MINUTES LATER

Flames burst into the sky as Mulder ran. He could hear Seraphine’s somber song behind him turn into a high-pitched scream before the shrill sound slowly trickled off to nothing but roaring fire and crackling wood. 

_“SCULLAYYY!”_

The forest seemed to shatter into the smashing of branches and leaves as he tore through them, his heart pounding fury in his chest until he heard her response.

_“MULDERRR!”_

“Scully! Where are you?”

“Mulder! Over here!” she called through the thicket. 

“Scully, Jesus, are you all right?” He was breathless as he ran to her, grasping her arm while he swept the flashlight across her face. 

“Fine,” she waved him off as she led him in the opposite direction they’d originally come. “God, there’s a fire!”

“I know, I set it.”

“What? Why, and where the hell were you?” she accused. “Doesn’t matter anymore, we need to move; now.”

“Scul-”

“-Anderson found David Michelson; alive, and she knows the way out from here! But I wouldn’t leave without you,” she said, eyes scanning the blaze behind him. “Come on, this way.”

“I saw them with the dead wolves when we were separated. I saw the Dryad too, Scully.” She turned to look at him, eyes wide. “She’s real. Shit, it was all so surreal. And now… now she’s free.” 

“Mulder…”

He slowed his pace and so did she. 

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you but the only way to set her free was burning her, Scully. She asked me to,” he pleaded. “She _begged_ me.”

She held his gaze, studying his serious expression, and nodded. “Okay, you saw something, but we need to go now and talk later.”

 _Later,_ Mulder thought, _might not be an option._

A series of bluish-purple flowers appeared on the trail ahead. Mulder could smell their sweet fragrance even through the smoke. They looked like a dotted blue, delicate carpet, lapping at the foot of the trees.

“The Bluebells!” Scully exclaimed. “Anderson said to follow the trail of Bluebell flowers out of the tree line.”

They began threshing a path through the undergrowth. Ferns flattened beneath them, brambles clawing at their sides as Mulder caught a glimpse of the clearing through the trees. His gut churned at the thought of what could be in store for them when they crossed into it - of what they might lose after they did. 

As they jogged, Mulder’s mind drifted to Seraphine. He’d spoken her name as the tree burned, freeing her spirit. The shimmering tendrils of her lifeforce unwound from the roots of the ancient oak with a snap. At first glance, it looked like she was dying, and her scream made bile clog his throat; but Seraphine had said it would save her. Save her spirit, her magic, maybe even an immortal love that spanned lifetimes. 

She was free. 

And Mulder believed.

The tree line loomed ahead and he stopped running, leaning against the nearest tree to catch his breath through the wafting smoke. It was an excuse to hold off their departure from the mystical forest. Though Mulder no longer held fear for what he wanted to confess to Scully, he did fear that it might not matter in the end. 

“Hey, what… Mulder, what’s wrong?” Scully turned around and ran up to him, a worried look on her face. She cupped his chin so she could shine a light in his eyes and make sure he wasn’t passing out. 

Mulder blinked rapidly, feeling moisture creep into his eyes. He turned his head away from Scully in an attempt to hold back the sting of emotion while he watched the flames lick the ebony sky. He swallowed and met her gaze again, determined. She leaned into him and put a hand on his chest. He swore her palm was shaking with the force of his pounding heart. 

Seraphine’s projected images of _what could be_ continued to swirl through his brain. The future as a Father he had no idea he wanted in life until he saw it and felt it for himself, the thing he could only dream about with Scully had been shoved into his eidetic brain. If Seraphine’s promise to fulfill her end of the bargain was true, then Scully would hopefully remember what she had seen while in here and what he was about to say, too.

“Maybe we’ve all been given a gift, Scully. Maybe this is the beginning.”

There was no going back at this point. The reality was that they might not remember any of this. Or worse, that he would and she wouldn’t. 

“Mulder, the fire…” She moved her hands to wrap them around his waist and tugged for him to move again, her wide eyes looking up at him in a silent plea. 

Mulder had nothing to lose. Not after what he knew they’d both seen in their heads, what they’d felt. And he sure as shit did not survive knocking on death's door with a gun to his head just weeks ago to let the chance to tell her he loved her slip away. Not after years of longing, of waiting, of downright pining. Not after considering back alley deals with the devil to find a cure to save her life. Certainly not after making love to her the way she deserved.

She’d run into the flames for him and he knew he’d never deserve it.

“I need to tell you something. And I need you to listen,” he rasped. “You deserve more, Scully. You-”

“-Stop,” she scolded as she pulled him through the trees and plumes of smoke.

“...you deserve to enjoy a life where you don’t have to buy a new suit every other week or fight through months of treatment for cancer that was given to you simply because you know me. You didn’t deserve to lose your sister and a daughter _and_ a chance at normalcy.”

She choked on a sob as she abruptly stopped and craned her neck to look up at him.

He was panicking more and more the closer they got to the clearing. Their time was running short and there were things he had to tell her, right here and right now. Things she had to hear him say before they fled the forest, even if she forgot the moment they did. She deserved to hear them all the same. 

“I’m dangerous, Scully, _this_ is dangerous,” he protested, gesturing between the two of them. Her chin trembled as she fisted his shirt.

“Stop it, Mulder,” she whimpered, pleading with him.

“But hell, that still didn’t stop me from falling in love with you,” he confessed. “And I do, so damn much. I love you, Scully, and I’m telling you now knowing full well you might not feel the same.”

She gasped, “Oh my God,” and immediately rose on tip-toe to kiss him firmly on the mouth. She pulled away, just enough to murmur along his lips, “You think I would’ve stepped foot in another forest like this if I didn’t love you back?”

He laughed, nearly melting where he stood, and it had nothing to do with the heat of the intensifying fire at their backs. 

“But... don’t you want more, Scully? Don’t you want _what could be?_ ”

“Of course I do,” she countered, clutching his forearms; hard. Her wet eyes shimmered in the light of the flames. 

His knees bobbed in defeat at the striking blow of her admittance of wanting more than he could offer right now. Maybe more than he ever could.

“But I want those things with you!” she cried. “Dammit, _you_ make me happy, Mulder, don’t you get it?” She reached up and held his face between her hands, thumbs stroking his dirty cheeks while a hot tear slipped down his face. “You’re my one in five billion, too.” 

That was all Mulder could’ve ever hoped to hear. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. She clung to his neck as he kissed her face, the salty tear on her cheek, her mouth, before a branch burned itself free from the smoky canopy nearby and fell to the ground with a thump. 

“And I mean every word,” she affirmed with a squeeze. “Now let’s get the hell out of here!”

“After you, G-woman,” Mulder smirked, utterly relieved he’d held his heart out for her and she accepted it with joy. Then together they ran, hand in hand, through the final cluster of trees while bursting their way into the clearing with a gasp. 

And remembered nothing that came before it.

  
  
  
  


_____

SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL FOREST

OUTSKIRTS

MAY 19TH

5:10 AM

Scully stumbled and fell to her knees just past the brambles along the tree line. Her fingers were laced within Mulder’s as their bodies crumpled to the ground. A sharp tingling sensation swept over her limbs and took her breath away.

“God,” she huffed. “What the hell?” 

She wiggled her hand out from within Mulder’s tight grip and stood, gasping at the sight of the forest spitting out fire like an angry volcano in front of her eyes. 

“Jesus Christ!” Mulder said, gently tugging her away from the heavily wooded area. The flashlights held within their hands were no longer needed with the flames lighting up the atmosphere. “Did we do that?”

Scully opened her mouth to protest that they absolutely did _not_ set trees ablaze, but found she had no answer to how one of the oldest forests in the nation was currently engulfed in an orange inferno. 

Mulder shivered while shaking out his arms. “My arms and legs feel like they’ve been asleep for hours.”

“I feel it, too. But Mulder…” she started, hesitant to bring attention to her lack of recollection if only she was the one experiencing it. 

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember shit,” Mulder finished for her. “What’s going on here?” Mulder questioned in concern. He looked around in the darkness before glancing down at his watch. “It’s four in the morning on the 19th,” he noted. “We’ve been in the forest for almost eighteen hours, Scully, and we didn’t go in there alone.”

“Deputy Anderson, she was with us when we started looking for Mr. Michelson…” Scully needlessly voiced the obvious, but worry left her with nothing else to say. 

“Let’s hope to hell she isn’t in there,” Mulder said grimly. 

He took a step forward, as if he wanted to rush back into danger to find her if she were, but Scully reached out to grab his shirt, keeping him standing firmly at her side. The same place she’d wanted him to be at the start of this case, she could remember that much.

“I really hope you’re right,” she admitted, feeling a sickening wave of failure turn her stomach. “And David Michelson… Jesus.”

“What the hell happened?” Mulder muttered and began to pace.

“I… I’m not sure.” 

“You’re not sure you remember?” he turned to question her, his face lit in an amber glow. “Or you’re not sure you know what’s going on?”

She ran a hand through her dirty hair, confused, staring at the dark streak of soot that now stained her palm an ashy black. 

“I don’t remember, Mulder, okay?” She was frustrated and overwhelmed as she watched the old-growth forest go up in smoke in front of them. Frantically, she searched her memory, sifted through her thoughts like a Rolodex, but couldn’t remember anything after they’d initially crossed the threshold of the clearing the first time. 

Scully reached up, the callus of her trigger finger grazing the chip nestled within the crest of her spine, and a familiar chill of foreboding crept across her skin. 

_No_ , she rebuked. _This missing time was different._

Mulder clasped her upturned hand within his and rubbed the soot from her knuckles. His touch was a comforting one. 

“Scully, it’s okay, we’re both confused.”

She sighed. “Well, that seems to be the only thing we know for certain.”

“The wind’s pushing the fire deeper into the forest. Away from us, at least,” Mulder reasoned. His voice rumbled through his hand still caressing hers. 

“Why do I feel like this has something to do with your theory of Wisps and monsters?” She pulled away from his ministrations when her eyes trailed to his lips, and her heart hammered within her chest. 

“Elijah’s book,” Mulder gasped. “It’s gone.”

They both turned to the fire and watched as it sprayed embers into the starlight. 

“Sorry about your _Gods and Monsters and Other Improbable things,”_ she offered, giving him a sympathetic smile. 

Their eyes locked, and suddenly Scully couldn’t help but imagine him writhing in ecstasy beneath her as he fucked her to completion. She blushed and broke their gaze, embarrassed she had no idea where such a visceral image had come from. Yet, she could not deny a twinge of soreness between her thighs.

_What the hell happened in there?_

“Admit it, Scully,” Mulder started as she pushed away dangerous thoughts. “You’re only sorry you never got to read the book.” He nudged her playfully, cutting through the tension that had settled among the roaring flames. 

“I’m only sorry we have one less team member than we started with, and one less missing person we’d intended to find,” she divulged, feeling more open with her inner thoughts than usual. “Let’s keep searching.” 

They turned to follow the clearing in hopes it would lead them toward their original rendezvous point, when Scully spotted two people huddled together in the shadows down the hill from them. 

Mulder pointed, “Hey, is that…”

“Deputy Anderson?” Scully hollered, clicking her flashlight on and shining it over her head. “Wave if you can hear us!”

“It’s me!” she yelled back, flailing her arms excitedly. “It’s _us!_ ” 

“Us?” Mulder wondered. “Holy shit, she found David Michelson, Scully!”

“Thank God,” she sighed, relieved, as Mulder’s hand grasped her shoulder in exhilaration. 

“And looks like the cavalry’s arriving,” Mulder said as sirens and fire engines blared and began pulling into the clearing a few hundred yards from where Anderson and David stood.

“Come on, looks like those two need some help,” Scully told him as Mulder bent down to untangle a stray vine knotted tightly around his ankle. 

He held it up and stared at it as if he remembered how it had gotten there. She arched a brow but he just shook his head and tossed it in the grass. 

“Maybe they know something more than we do,” he huffed as they jogged down the hill, following the tree line towards the others. 

In the distance, Scully could see the yellow crime scene tape flapping in the wind that the deputy had strung up before they’d entered the forest yesterday. They were right back where they started.

“You two okay?” she asked as they approached Anderson and David Michelson, both still looking as dazed as she and Mulder felt. “I’m beyond happy to see you safe and sound, Mr. Michelson, but I can’t…”

“Yeah, I _can’t_ either,” David piped in, shaking his head in confusion. “Deputy Anderson here tells me I was missing for days… but I don’t know what happened and why I’m here, or who any of you people are besides what she’d just told me after I woke up.”

“He collapsed on me after we ran into the clearing,” Anderson explained. “I dragged him away from the thicket and he slipped into unconsciousness right afterward. He’d just woken up in a panic before you yelled for us.”

“While bleeding too,” Mulder commented with a grimace. “Shit, it looks like your calf was used as a chew toy.”

Scully tossed him a glare before Mulder added, “No offense.”

“Yeah,” David cringed. “Hurts like hell, but so do my feet. It feels like I just ran a marathon in these loafers.”

Scully hunched down to inspect his wound in the light. It looked like a set of sharp teeth punctured the skin and ruptured several veins. “A wolf, maybe. Or a coyote? she guessed. “Even so, none of us seem to have our hiking packs with us so that means you’ll have to wait until the ambulance can get ahold of you to salve the wound.”

A pregnant pause hovered around them as the forest crackled in flames and another round of sirens sounded in the distance. The reality of the situation seemed to suddenly strike the deputy while David held his head in his hands, overwhelmed.

“What fuck happened in there?” Anderson choked out. “I don’t… I can’t remember a damn thing. The only thing I recall is us convening at the entrance where David here was last seen. We walked through to search and…”

“Nothing,” Mulder finished. “Something happened to all of us in that forest. Something unnatural. I can feel it in my bones, just like what Elijah Bay had said and just like how Rebecca stated the atmosphere felt the moment David disappeared.”

“Rebecca? Oh, my God!” David shot up to his feet as his shock began to wear off, his injured leg buckling beneath him, and a rush of blood gushed from the jagged tears in his skin. He didn’t seem to notice. “You know my Becca? Where is she, is she okay?” he blurted as he hobbled off towards where he had last seen his fiancée days ago.

“Mr. Michelson,” Scully reached out to help him. “She’s okay, she’s safe. And I know for a fact she’s been just as worried for you as you are for her right now.”

“And the baby, did she have our baby?” David questioned. Scully could feel his adrenaline pumping along his wrist. 

“She was still pregnant when we left her,” Mulder assured as an ambulance pulled through the narrow pathway, followed by three police vehicles and a long line of local volunteer firemen and fire trucks.

“Oh, Jesus, I left her in this clearing alone during that weird fucking storm. And that voice… what the hell?” David groaned. “Why?”

“I wish we had answers,” Scully confessed. “But I think what matters now is that you’re safe.”

David nodded, his brown eyes welling with tears. “Thank you.”

“Empire County EMS,” a woman in a white uniform announced as she approached with a medkit. “Anyone injured?”

Scully jumped in and began explaining David’s wound and their shared state of disorientation. She decided to omit the detail that their current symptoms aligned perfectly with Mulder’s old case file. She didn’t need to voice her concern aloud. She saw the acknowledgement written on Mulder’s face as soon as he confirmed that they, too, were missing time. 

“Look!” Mulder said, sidestepping another concerned EMT shining a penlight in his eyes. “Looks like someone’s here to see you, David.”

David caught sight of his fiancée and mother waving frantically from inside the second ambulance. “Becca? Oh, God!”

“David!” Rebecca cried. Scully could see within the fluorescent lighting of the ambulance that she was sitting on a stretcher, holding her pregnant belly that was strapped up to a heart rate monitor. “Baby, are you okay?”

“Yeah, honey, I’ll live,” David’s voice cracked with emotion. “And hey, Mom,” he laughed through his tears. 

“Sir, hold still,” the EMT dressing David’s wound scolded. “Your fiancée went into labor at the police station when the call came in about the fire. She insisted she ride in the spare bus when she was told we were headed this way so she could see with her own eyes if you were found.”

Scully pulled a gawking Mulder to the side for the EMT’s and police officers to do their jobs. They watched on with smiles on their faces as the tearful reunion unfolded. 

“The department was looking for us?” Anderson asked one of the officers as they walked up to her, followed closely by a wide-eyed sheriff. “Sir, I’m not sure what happened.”

“It’s fine, deputy. We’ll need your statement after we clear the area for the firemen to start puttin’ out this blaze. We’re just glad everyone made it outta there without flames lickin’ their asses,” Sheriff Abrams said, motioning for her to follow him to the other awaiting officers. “Radio communications were down so…” his voice trailed off, and Deputy Anderson waved goodbye over her shoulder. 

“David?” Rebecca called through the growing crowd, grinning easily at the man she loved through labor pains. “We’re having a baby.”

“I didn’t miss it.” He was choked up, smiling with relief. “I didn’t miss it.”

After the EMT’s loaded David on the stretcher and did a quick assessment of her and Mulder’s lungs, they were all shooed out of the clearing by four fire trucks overflowing with firefighters ready to charge into the inferno. 

“We’ll need to make our statements too,” Scully mumbled, exhaustion taking hold. “Then hopefully, we can get cleaned up back at the cabin before we fly back to DC.”

Mulder chuckled. “I’d never think about depriving you of your bubble baths, just like I’d never wake a sleeping bear. What kind of partner do you take me for?”

“Shut up, Mulder,” she smiled. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

“Oh, I think you’d be surprised.” 

Mulder’s hand brushed across her back as they walked to their parked rental car and found its rightful place along the cradle of her hips, over the mark of her endless Mulder-induced loop she’d etched into her skin. It felt right, perfect. It always had. But this time she felt his touch beneath its inked surface, like a spark deep down in her DNA. She glanced at him as ash burst into the murky air and floated down like snow, and couldn’t help but wonder if he felt it, too.

“So in your scientific opinion, what’s the explanation here, Scully?”

She looked upward, eyes cast to the gibbous moon and spilled sugar in the sky.

“I don’t know, Mulder. Maybe this time, there isn’t one.”

  
  
  
  


_____

Perched upon a branch within the shadows of a tall willow tree, Seraphine watched on as the two Mortals walked off side by side into the sunrise. They had helped set her spirit free, and for that, she would be eternally grateful. For now, she was a phoenix risen from ashes once again in search of her soul’s mate. 

Seraphine sighed, allowing the power of their bond to wash over her crimson feathers from above. Their tightly bound emotions unspooled the way roots did as they sprang from the earth, crisscrossing heartstrings of the past while they melded as one into the future. 

Their love was a powerful one.

 _Soon they shall see,_ she thought with an omniscient smile. _Soon they will know their future as I do._

Soon, they shall set themselves free.

Lights sparkled like jewels in the distance of the northern sky, and her forest continued to burn. 

  
  
  
  


_____

  
  
  
  


SCULLY’S APARTMENT

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON DC

9:14 PM

“I still can’t believe we went all the way out there, found David Michelson, and have no memory of doing it,” Mulder complained for the fifth time as they stopped in front of apartment five. 

Scully sighed and dug out her keys, trying not to think too much about that mysterious part of the case, though it had proven to be a near-impossible task with the intense way she’d been yearning to tear his clothes off ever since they’d left Michigan. 

She pushed that thought away; barely.

“Not to mention getting that voicemail from Rebecca when we landed,” he added with that lopsided grin she loved so much. Rebecca and David had welcomed a 7lb 6oz baby girl into the world just hours after David had been hauled from within the burning forest alongside them.

“You _were_ beaming when you heard they named her Hope for what you’d given Rebecca when you decided to take her fiancée’s case,” Scully praised, openly gazing at him with a smile in her eyes. “You gave her hope, Mulder, when no one else wanted to try.”

He chuckled and reached out to gently squeeze her hand. Suddenly, she felt the need to keep talking. To unburden herself of the nagging thought that she still could not offer a reasonable explanation for anything that happened. 

“Sorry I have nothing else to offer in means of theory this time as to why Rebecca Shaw or Ella Michelson needed _hope_ in the first place,” she shrugged.

Mulder gazed right back.

“No one does it like you do, Scully.”

“What’s that, challenge you at every turn? she wondered, marveling at the stubborn man she loved like no other. “Check you for head injuries?”

“Offer me validation when no one else wanted to try,” he answered boldly, mimicking her words to him. His earnest gaze danced with hers with an intensity that rocked Scully back on her heels.

“That’s my job,” she said softly. “To help prove or disprove your unconventional theories. Validate the work.”

“ _Our_ work,” he corrected. His boldness outdid her own when he brought her wrist to his mouth, brushing his lips along her racing pulse point. “But that’s not what I meant, Scully. _You_ validate me.”

“Mulder…”

“It’s the truth.” 

As elusive and convoluted as that had been for them to find, her support for what they did had never wavered, even when it risked the lives of the ones she loved.

Scully cleared her throat and looked at her keys dangling from the doorknob. What would happen if she listened to that emboldened voice telling her to finally invite him in?

The flush of her cheeks spread downward and warmed her like the forest fire’s flames, settling somewhere in the vicinity around her heart. She knew what power that feeling wielded, what that heat blooming in her chest for nearly six years had meant to her. But for some reason, that did not elicit the familiar wave of existential fear she’d tried desperately to hide.

She felt peace, instead. 

“The report,” she pressed on, breathless as a wave of deja vu swept over her. “What will you say?”

He played with the flight tag attached to her bag, thumb rubbing back and forth across her name like Braille. He was delaying his departure. And she was certain that if she opened the door right now and invited him in, the temptation to finally say _fuck it_ and beg him to please fuck her instead was overpowering. What the hell was wrong with her? She stared at him out of the corner of her eye, imagining in explicitly vivid detail about what she wanted to do to him on the other side of the door.

She may never need her vibrator again. 

“Probably the only thing we can say,” he shrugged. “That missing the men and their lost time happened, no matter how shrouded in science or paranormal it may be. That the real reason behind it may remain an obscure one, twisting itself into folklore and fairytales. Just like the stories in the book Elijah Bay gave us that’s now been reduced to ashes.”

“You think David and Rebecca will tell this one to their child one day?” she wondered, oddly no longer fearful he may see the ripple of turmoil beneath her calm facade, that she cannot do the same with a child of her own. “A fairytale of monsters and missing time?”

“I think… I think I want to believe that we all will do that one day,” he whispered, bravely leaning down to kiss her cheek and her eyes fluttered shut. The kiss was soft and warm, his bottom lip grazing the corner of her mouth, and suddenly, oxygen was no longer a necessity. His mouth lingered, hovering next to hers, yet not nearly long enough for her to claim it. 

Mulder pulled away with a smile and handed her her suitcase. She had a distinct inkling that the next time he kissed her it wouldn’t be on the cheek, and it sure as hell would not be chaste. 

“Goodnight, Scully.” 

He turned and walked away with his hands in his pockets and a pep in his step.

“Goodnight.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Scully tossed and turned beneath her bedsheets. Her satin pajamas twisted around her frame as she fidgeted. She could feel the loneliness of her bedroom wrap around her like a cold vise as a bereftness threatened to choke her. She thought of Mulder and the way his touch still lingered along her skin. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she began to dream...

_They were running through the forest, twigs abusing their bodies as they did, feet leaping over gnarled roots in the earth while fire flared at their backs._

_Mulder stopped suddenly and so did she. Then in a blink of an eye, she was there, his face cradled in her hands, eyes burning with emotion. She felt something snap and unravel from around her chest. That private place where she kept her love and desire for Mulder hidden had burst open, making her feel light as air; buoyant. As if her heart with Mulder’s name seared into it like a rune was floating out in the open for him to see._

_She was free._

_“Dammit, you make me happy, Mulder, don’t you get it?” she heard herself say, felt her heart racing beneath her breast. “You’re my one and five billion, too...”_

Scully woke with a gasp and clutched her chest as memories flooded her brain like a tsunami. She remembered. And oh God, she’d never felt so relieved in her life. 

She reached over to call Mulder and tell him what she’d seen within her mind. To just hear his voice as she silently sobbed with the release of her pent up emotions, but the phone rang instead. 

“Hello?” 

_“Scully,”_ Mulder breathed.

“My God, Mulder, I-”

_“-I remember, Scully. I remember it all.”_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_Epilogue_

  
  
  
  
OLD-GROWTH FOREST

LOCATION UNKNOWN

YEARS LATER

The sky was sea blue and the clouds were as white as lightning. The birds sang and Bluebell flowers bloomed in abundance. Seraphine smiled as she kissed the slender fingers twined within her own, giving her mate's hand a gentle squeeze. 

“Cassia, my love, watch with me,” she implored. “See who has helped give us the rest of our eternity together.”

“Yes,” Cassia grinned in delight, her lush lashes fluttering in the sunlight. “Show me whom I should thank for our happiness.”

Seraphine searched her magic to find those she had gifted their memories to. Grasping onto the image she wanted, she and Cassia dipped into a future moment of the Mortals’ lives together.

Seraphine felt a satisfied smile tug at her lips as the powerful vision engulfed her... 

_Their lips were dancing against one another in a soft and passionate kiss. Their eyes shone with so much history and love within them when they finally separated._

_“...and that, little one, is how your mommy and I met.”_

_She slid her palm down the curve of his back and murmured, “What are you telling our daughter this time, Mulder?”_

_Their eyes locked once again - sky blue and forest floor viridian - and Seraphine held Cassia’s hand over her racing heart._

_“The same thing I told our son, Scully, a fairytale,” he said._

_“No, you’re not,” she scoffed playfully, watching proudly as he swayed their child gently in the moonlight. “You’re telling her about us.”_

_“Yeah.” He smiled down at the copper-headed little girl, curled and molded sleepily along his chest. “But maybe that’s the same thing,” he whispered, watery eyes gazing tenderly into his wife’s bright blue ones._

_“I’m afraid to ask, Mulder.”_

_“Fairytales are flawed and their characters are imperfect beings struggling along the way,” he avowed. “But there’s always a shining light in even the darkest of tales.”_

_She glanced away, a knowing smile tugging at her lips as she looked into the starlight. Her fingers combed lovingly through his chestnut hair as he spoke._

_“Maybe that’s the ending to our story, Scully: hope. Maybe that’s where real magic resides.”_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for sticking this out and making to the end. I ended up loving how this turned out and truly hope you did too. I would LOVE to know what you enjoyed most or what thoughts you had as you read certain parts. Feedback is my fave and any questions are also more than welcome. 
> 
> Rachel, thank you for waiting for my last min update and I hope you loved it!😁

**Author's Note:**

> I will be posting the rest of the chapters very very soon so thank you for being patient with me.


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